Sunshine In Winter
by Guardian1
Summary: Yuffie Kisaragi gets into trouble, and her whole life changes when she is maimed. Sentenced to death in a matter of months, the only person she can rely on is Vincent Valentine. Finished.
1. Prologue

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

**Prologue**

* * *

I, Yuffie Kisaragi, have always been a traveller.

Maybe that's what started it, this whole sorry mess; me out in the forest, as  
if just waiting for them to trip over me, getting the crap kicked out of my  
sorry behind, and thinking them all such idiots, especially him -

Wait. That's a stupid place to start. It's too far before the beginning, and  
everyone always starts at the beginning, don't they?

It's a sensible place to start.

How do I start? Once upon a time and shoo-la-la?

'Once upon a time there was a girl called Yuffie, but this story sucks, 'cause  
everyone knows princesses in fairytales are supposed to be beautiful and have  
sweet eyes and have fairytale-beautiful names like Aeris.'

That doesn't work. I'm no princess.

I'm just a traveller.

... Yes, that's it.

* * *

I have always been a traveller, even from the oh-so-tender age of four years  
old. History records my love of hiding away in silly places whilst my mother  
went insane looking for her precious daughter, or going around exploring  
enormous attics where I always found something shiny to play with. Shiny played  
a very high part in my universe, especially the shiny that my father used to  
let me play with, round and bright...

History records I cut my teeth on an 'All' materia. I deny this vehemently...

I'm sure it was merely a 'Restore'.

Anyway, getting off Sidetrack Lane. I've always preferred to roam around,  
getting into every nook and cranny of the universe, rather than sitting on my  
butt and sipping tea. I don't like sitting down and waiting for the world to  
come to me; I'm going to go and come to the world! Welcome, Yuffie Kisaragi!

It didn't happen that way for a long, long time.

Anyway, even after I saved the world (with a little help from Cloud an' all  
that) I don't know why people expected me to settle again. Screw that! There  
was a lot of world out there to be poked into, lots of materia to find, lots of  
mountains to climb up. I had no place in life yet, so I had to make my own -  
explore the world, make it mine!

This went on for two years, and I turned eighteen. Travelling alone is a very  
sorry business; I saw my friends infrequently, and most of the time my life was  
spent on my livelihood - materia. I bought it, I mastered it, I sold it. By the  
time a year was passed, I had quite a fortune built up. I was mostly a packrat,  
so I spent the bare minimum of it.

Life's lonely and dangerous, alone, and I had many, many close scrapes that I  
laughed about afterwards. Of scars, I had many; both upon my skin and my  
psyche...

Gawd, I'm starting to sound like some damn psychiatrist. Or Red, or Vincent, or  
somebody. In short, I was alone. A-L-O-N-E. I never went to go see my friends  
much, never seemed to have the time nor inclination; Red was at Cosmo and  
Cloud'n Tifa were at Junon helping Reeve who was farting around with what was  
left of Shinra, and Barret and his sprog were off at Corel. Cid was dead, Shera  
poisoned his tea. (At least, I wish that had been the way it went; he was at  
Rocket Town, just as horrible as ever, smoking and inhaling tannin like it had  
gone out of style. And she had MARRIED HIM! And she was HAVING HIS BABY! Ugh!  
Take me away from Not-Nice Mental Imageland!)

Aeris was quite literally sleeping with the fishes, and as for Vincent... ah,  
he was probably sleeping with the fishes too, only not quite so literally. Back  
then I would have betted a hefty chunk of my materia that he had holed himself  
up in that nasty old mansion to let himself rot in the coffin. Not that it made  
much difference.

"Hey, Vincent," I'd go to Vincent.  
"..."

"Hey, Vincent," I'd go to Rotting Vincent In A Coffin.  
"..."

"Hey, Vincent," I'd go to thin air.  
"..."

See? Can you tell the difference? I sure can't.

I was okay with being alone. It wasn't like I minded that much. At least I was  
away from Wutai, from my father's grandiose comments about me finally settling  
down and providing him with A Leader For Wutai, Or At Least A Kisaragi Heir.  
Finally I got so sick of hearing about the damned Leader For Wutai and even  
worse, The Heir, I exploded.

"You want a heir so much, go have one yourself!" I screeched. "I'm sure as hell  
not going to go out and provide one for you!"

Thus started another Wutai War, and we screamed at eachother for about two  
hours. Godo got very red in the face and vomited out words like 'Duty!' and  
'Honor!' and 'Maturity!' and I merely responded with all the litany I'd learned  
from my darling Cid. (I appreciated Cid very much in those hours.) Finally, I  
shouted at him to kindly go and sit on a tack and wait until I popped out a  
piglet, and slammed the door. It wasn't very mature of me, but oh, did it feel  
good...

That was two years ago. Hadn't seen the red lacquer of Wutai since. And I was  
glad, glad!

But I could have killed for a good cup of jasmine tea.

Anyway, the story doesn't start there. That'd be boring, because for the next  
two years all I did was roam around and kill things, as you know. But after two  
years, my luck seemed to run out...

I was deep in the jungle, somewhere around Gongaga, I think. I had to stay away  
from the civilized places because all you get around the outskirts of cities  
are crappy monsters, like those dumb green clone-frogs of death. I wanted  
something big! I had a good Restore materia that was close to completion, and  
just a little bit more would do the trick and earn me the moolah. Big, big, big!

I got something big.

It must have escaped from a cave or something, because dragons sure as hell  
didn't like to screw around in jungles. They liked the plains; I thought I was  
safe when I hunted on the fringe of the heady-scented jungle area. I was happy  
and I was confident, Conformer in hand.

I'd not been hunting long before I heard a heavy flap, flap, flap in the air  
above me. I got really excited; the beat was of huge, leathery wings, and I  
thought I'd scored myself one of those enormous birds of prey. Scrambling to  
slot materia into my weapon, I dashed out into the open space to meet it,  
shouting to attract it's attention.

Oh, if only I'd kept my mouth shut! I attracted the monster's attention, but a  
bone-splitting roar set my knees shaking and I looked up. It was a dragon, a  
green dragon, not a firedrake or just a silly flying reptile but an enormous  
winged dragon...! I was stunned, but not that stunned that I didn't immediately  
go for my materia.

I pummeled it with a level three Lightning spell, but that just made the damn  
thing annoyed. It set a nice amount of jungle on fire with it's next gassy  
roar, the crackle of fire loud in my ears. Then it swooped down for it's prey -  
me.

I don't really remember much after that, except turning back to dive into the  
partial safety of the trees and feeling it's overpowering presence against me  
and suddenly pain, mindnumbing sickening tearing clawing pain in my left leg.  
It must have tried to grab me, but failed in the attempt; however, it had not  
failed to injure me.

The jungle was what saved me in the end. I fell among the underbrush, and the  
dragon must have spotted some bigger, plumper prey that had been flushed out by  
it's fire. I lay there and whimpered like a cat about to die, body numb with  
the searing, burning pain; I felt something moving down my leg in thick, heavy  
torrents.

Muzzily, I tried to get up, and the pain made me immediately choke up with a  
mouthful of vomit.

I coughed up onto the dirt next to me, and finally, knowing I would die alone  
in a nasty little jungle and be eaten by the stupid mutant death-frogs made me  
burst into tears. I screamed as hard as I could, and then, when I couldn't take  
it anymore, I mercifully blacked out.

* * *

I dreamt in my feverish, delirious sleep.

I dreamt that Aeris was holding my hand, dressed all in green, telling me to  
hang on because the Lifestream didn't need me yet. I didn't need the lifestream  
either, but her presence was comforting. Screw death, I told her. Her laugh  
could have broken my heart. I think it already had.

I dreamt she disappeared and my mother floated in her place. The confusion and  
the pain was growing, and she said nothing; only stroked my forehead as I lay  
there. I was beginning to cry with pain and tiredness and the bitter wish to  
make it all stop.

I dreamt Vincent was there; he was crouching on the ground beside me, claw at  
hand. He took hold of my leg and before I could beg him to stop, he sliced it  
open, and I screamed and screamed and screamed.

Then the dreams stopped.

"I think she's coming around."

Well, thanks for stating the obvious, I thought dizzily, and then the pain hit  
me. My left leg felt like it was on fire, and it was as sore as all hell; like  
something was eating away at it. My tongue felt like it was a sock, but that  
didn't stop me from whimpering angrily.

"Can you administer something, Akila? I need to go and make up the medication."

My arm was grabbed and I felt a syringe being forced into my vein. The popping  
pain of it was like skipping in daisies compared to the Tonberries having a  
festival in my leg.

"How are you feeling?" It was a kind voice, a woman's, the kind that asked you  
if you liked milk with your cookies. However, I was not in the mood for kind  
voices, or milk and cookies.

"Lahk thit," I spat, my voice harsh and stuffy.

She got the gist of things. "Well, that's to be expected, dear. You've gotten  
yourself into a bit of trouble."

There was something on my eyes, cool and damp, as well as on my forehead. I  
swallowed.

"Why can't I see?" I demanded.

"Well, dear, you've had a very bad fever and your eyes are going to be very  
sensitive to light," she said evasively. "I think you had better keep that on  
for a few hours."

I sighed and rested back. The painkiller I had been stabbed with was beginning  
to kick in and the pain was fading; I was also feeling kinda woozy, but at  
least the pain was fading. It made me so relieved I felt like getting up to do  
a jig whilst shouting 'NEATO BURRITO!'

However, her evasive tone made me morbidly curious. "What's wrong with my leg?"  
I asked. "Is it broken? It really hurts, as in really really really - "

"I can imagine that," she soothed. "You lost a lot of blood, and tore quite a  
few muscles; and your wound got infected, and you very nearly died. You're  
still not out of the woods yet."

"Thanks," I grumbled.

"Why, it was a miracle you survived through, what with the infection and all;  
it carried straight through your bloodstream." Well, that would explain why I  
felt like a steaming turd. "And you'd lost so much blood; why, if that nice  
Vincent boy hadn't gotten you here in time - "

I tried to sit up, but dizziness got to me and I fell back. "Vincent?" I  
squawked. Oh, hell's teeth, no. There had to be lots of Vincents out there.  
"Does this Vincent have long dark hair and red eyes and is kind of scary  
looking?" I asked doubtfully.

"Ooh, I wouldn't say scary, quite pretty eyes, in fact!" the nurse cooed. "Why,  
such a polite boy, always brings me flowers of a Sunday - "

She began an enormous list of Vincent's graces, and I would have pshawed the  
fact that it was Valentine other than the fact that she ended it wistfully,  
"Though I wish the lad would be less quiet."

Well, wasn't that the rat's ass. Vincent was graciously allowed to have about a  
minute or two of my thoughts, most of them involving the question, 'Why is he  
here?' and other such cliches. However, not even Pinkeye Man can hold my  
attention for long, and soon my mind was back to my plight - the leg that felt  
like it was a piece of swollen wood - swollen, painful wood.

I couldn't feel it properly, and that was what scared me; sharp pain would have  
assured me that I was still in one piece.

"I'm just going to check up on Dr. Bannon, dear," the nurse cooed to me. Thank  
the Gods.

Her clacking footsteps signalled her announced departure and nothing loath, I  
groped my hands up to behind my head. The damp blindfold had been tied on, but  
for a girl who'd picked her first lock at the sweet age of five, what was a  
knot?

All too soon it was off and daylight stung my eyes. "Ow!" I breathed grumpily.  
Geez, the sun sure was bright, even if the room was typically Gongagan; earthen  
walls, dried flower hangings, spices, wooden furniture; I was both surprised  
and disappointed they hadn't done cool stuff with me yet, like stuffing me full  
of frog's-eye paste and chanting over me.

Ah, sight was back. Time to inspect my leg.

I blinked.

Then I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed until I flailed around  
and I toppled out of the bed and there was white-hot pain connecting my leg and  
my body and it felt like a different entity and all there was was the scream,  
scratchy and sharp in my throat, until they came in and gave me another  
tranquilizer and then everything went grey.

Oh, Mother, Gods help me.


	2. Chapter One

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

**Chapter One**

"Miss Kisaragi, I'm afraid you have only one safe option. I would never  
do this to you if I did not feel the need, but I feel that for the sake  
of your life we need to ampu - "

"No."

I suppose Dr. Bannon was a nice man normally. He had a lot of dull,  
fair hair and brown eyes and glasses and a nervous twitch in one eye.  
Apparently he'd set up a clinic in Gongaga due to Reeve's orders for  
the like in every city after Meteor. That was the reason for the lack  
of good old Gongagan faith medicine. I couldn't have given a flying  
fuck; in fact, at this point, I felt like screaming for the good old  
Gongagan faith medicine.

"Miss Kisaragi, hear me out." His voice was still steady. Patient man.  
"This infection is spreading; right now we can amputate below the knee.  
But you have been severely infected, and poisoned; you are incredibly  
weak and your white blood cell count is going to have a severe setback  
due to the antidotes used for the poison. I have no other choice I can  
make in good faith but remove the wounded leg before the infection  
takes your life."

"No."

Blank, quiet and a monotone was the way to go. That way I didn't have  
to think. That way I didn't have to face anything.

His voice began taking on a pleading tone. "Miss Kisaragi, you have a  
matter of months."

Silence.

"Miss Kisaragi, you will_ die_."

Silence.

"Junon has some excellent prosthetics," he offered, obviously taking my  
silence for obedience. "Totally natural-looking - "

Did he know where he could put his prosthetics? "No."

He walked around to my bed slowly and pulled up a chair. I rolled away  
from him.

"Dying of a bacterial infection isn't pretty," he murmured. "I can't  
tell you whether it will be quick or slow. If you're lucky, death would  
come quickly; if not, you'll linger on, losing your bodily functions,  
so slowly, lying in bed and waiting to die - "

"Shut the hell up!" I screeched and burst into tears.

He talked on and on. Most likely another disease would carry me off;  
most likely I'd slip into a coma by the end of it. By the time he was  
finished I had cried myself out of tears and was on to dry hacking  
sobs, the kind babies cry when they throw tantrums. He was led out by  
the nurse eventually and I heard raised voices in the corridor; I  
didn't care. The sobs didn't stop, hysteria, throat closing... they  
gave me an injection, I think, because I slipped away into darkness.

* * *

When I awoke, there was porridge for me, and murky orange juice, and -  
Vincent. He was sitting beside me, even more quiet than the tray  
containing my breakfast, and although my stomach grumbled it was him I  
focused on first.

He looked exactly the same as he had when I'd seen him last, when we  
all parted ways; he'd dropped the clothing, however, and had tamed his  
wild mane of ebon hair into a ponytail. I was rather disappointed; I'd  
always admired that lightless, blue-black flow. His clothes, although  
black as his hair, were somewhat more normal than ones of old. However,  
after first inspection, I tired of analyzing his appearance and got  
straight to the point.

"Why are you here?"

"...I live here," he said simply. "Here's your breakfast."

"Don't want it," I sulked. My leg was throbbing, pounding, hurting so  
much that it seemed like a different entity. "Going to die. May as well  
go of starvation."

"Starvation is a long process," he noted.

"Oh, go away." I took the bowl and began to eat the contents within.  
Although it was sweet, there was an underlying bitterness to it that  
notified me that there was medication crushed within.

After a few spoonfuls, I became aware of his eyes still trained on me,  
and I glared at him indignantly. "What the hell're you staring at?" I  
accused him. "What is this, 'watch the dying person' week?"

He looked at me then, and for some reason I flushed and had to look  
away. Damn, did I ever hate his deep-red eyes; something within them  
touched me, told me, 'I know all your secrets.'

"You are not going to die, Yuffie." It was the same voice tone as  
always, soft and whispery, but there was an edge of firmness to it.

I gestured to my leg, swollen and swathed in bandages, in all it's  
unsightly shades of reds and greens and bruise-blues where the angry  
skin could be seen. "If you wanna hear the whole gist of it, go talk to  
that fucking doctor. He can tell you the step-by-step process!"

"He is merely... worried, Yuffie. It is your only satisfactory chance at life,  
I hear."

"I don't want to be an amputee," I said heatedly. "I don't want to walk  
around on sticks, I don't want to be ugly! You don't _understand_!"

"..." He raised his arm, the golden-burnished-copper claw.

"It's not the _same_," I practically sobbed in frustration. The  
medicine in my porridge had taken the pain away and thus the bite from  
my anger, but now I was merely deep-down in the throes of self pity.  
"My leg is my life! How can I fight? I'm a ninja! I need this leg. I'd  
- I'd rather die, and that's my decision, damn it."

He nodded at that, smooth and calm. "Yes... that is a decision you are  
allowed to make."

I took the orange juice and sipped at it. It was too sour for my  
tastes, but it was liquid and cool and tasted wonderful, even with the  
underlying sour tang. It was a relief that Vinnie wasn't going on at me  
about how my body'd look nine months from now; of course, he was  
sitting there looking morose, but I was used to that and he was  
definitely talking more than nor -

"However, you will be going back to Wutai."

I spat out a wad of orange juice into my glass, snorting citrus up my  
nose, my sinuses burning but I was too surprised and angry to care.  
"What the fuck?!" I swore.

He remained totally calm. "As you are still under the legal age of  
twenty-one to look after yourself in Wutaian law, you will be required  
to be with your father. I will be escorting you there to make sure you  
don't have different ideas along the way. You will not make a decision  
like this so lightly, Yuffie, without Godo. Asa can perform any surgery  
you need, and also look after you, medicinal-wise."

Asa was the wisewoman-cum-doctor in Wutai, looked three thousand years  
old (she was probably older) and had probably delivered everybody in  
the entire village.

I was too angry and too shocked to speak. My face was burning red, and  
I spluttered incoherently, trembling in rage.

"Godo has been informed," he said coolly. "Cid arrives tomorrow morning  
with his airship... We'll be at Wutai before noon tomorrow." Without  
any goodbye, he stood and approached the door.

"_You rotten bastard!_"

I flung the now-empty glass of juice at his back. The door shut before  
it could connect, and it shattered into a million pieces on the earthen  
floor.

I didn't sleep that night, fuming. I lay awake in the cool darkness and  
watched the window until the pale light of dawn was forming outside,  
waiting to hear the familiar roar of engines from the Highwind dimly  
spinning outside Gongaga. Gawd, would I give Vinnie a piece of my mind  
in the morning! I'd tug his fake arm off and beat him to death with it.  
Then I'd drag him around a bit and jump on his stomach, and, and...

Thinking these happy thoughts, I calmed slightly and dozed off.

* * *

I was awoken what seemed only a minute later by my bed jerking  
erratically; I sat up immediately and rubbed at my eyes.

"Gaw-#!&#-damnit," grunted a familiar figure, none-too-gently wheeling  
my bed out of the makeshift hospital. "Vincent told me you'd have your  
ass asleep."

"Stop it," I squawked feebly. "Put me back. I'm not going on your awful  
airship, and if I am I am sooo going to puke over it, so help me Gawd,  
so you better put me back - "

Cid smirked, flicking ash from his cigarette to the side. "Ha! You  
wish, punk! The moment I heard that you were gonna get on my ship, I  
knew you were gonna blow your chunks everywhere, so I got a rubber  
sheet. Nice leg, b'the way," he guffawed.

"I hate you," I whined.

"# that," he said absently. "In my day, we didn't give ya punks a  
choice. We just sawed the damn leg off. And no goddamn talk of  
prosthetics - you shoulda seen one of the guys in my engineering sector  
back in Shinra. The #-head sawed off his whole damn hand and he  
stuck a file in there later for kicks. We called him - "

"File-hand?" I suggested sarcastically.

Cid blinked, then moved his cigarette to the other side of his mouth.  
"Nah, we just called him #-head. Damn git shoulda seen what he was  
doin' with the saw. It was kinda fun to see him peelin' apples,  
though."

I sighed. Cid was always just that, vintage Cid. I perked up out of my  
lethargy and propped myself up on my elbows as he led me through the  
misty road out of Gongaga, empty and still and quiet as the dawn that  
was barely poking through the clouds. "Where's Vincent?"

"Gone off t'get his stuff."

That alarmed me. "I thought he was just escorting me there, not  
staying."

"How the hell am I supposed to #ing know? I'd bet fifty gil he  
didn't say fifteen words to me on the PHS." He began wheeling me up the  
ramp - the one that I'd swung and cartwheeled up and down so many  
times. I began to feel infirm and totally helpless.

"He mouthed off to _me_," I complained. "In fact, he just never shut up!  
Ordering me off to Wutai, bossing me around..." I sighed. "It's  
probably not Vincent. It's an evil zombie."

"Vincent's an evil #ing zombie," Cid commented.

"Yeah, but this new one's less apathetic."

"I am... flattered, somewhat," Vincent responded dryly, stepping out  
from the top of the ramp.

Cid spat out his cigarette and glared at him, pushing my bed into his  
airship with a surprising jerk as I squealed in un-enjoyment. "#!  
Damnit, man! Stop sneaking around everywhere!"

Vincent turned to me, looking at me with his blood-dark eyes, asking  
questions without voice. I hmphed and turned my head away - catch me  
talking to some meddling vampiric jerk who was shipping me back to the  
last place I wanted to go!  
He merely raised a raven eyebrow and turned back to Cid.

Cid secured my bed in the bridge, which had no threatened rubber sheet  
- but it did have a large steel bowl. "If she tosses her chocobos over  
my bridge, I'm gonna shove my Gospel up where it ain't comfy f'you," he  
threatened Vincent, who was sitting on the far side of the bridge.

I looked out the window next to my bed and sniffed. "I'm not feeling  
ill," I said haughtily. "You won't need to injure Mr. Valentine." I'll  
get to do all that.

"_Mis_-tah Valentine," Cid mocked, and entered a quick conversation with  
the lone pilot sitting in his seat reading a magazine.

_Mis_-tah Valentine fumbled in the pocket of his shirt for something and  
approached me, pressing something into my hand. "...Medication," he  
answered my wary stare.

I suspiciously sniffed the pills, then popped them into my mouth and  
crunched away at the bitterness, swallowing down. I was fast becoming  
quite adept at swallowing pills.

The Highwind lurched and I groaned slightly as it took to the air,  
burying my head in the sickly-sweet medical smell of my pillow. I was  
quite quickly becoming drowsy; that shithead Vincent must have slipped  
me sleeping pills. "Bastard," I murmured, but he had already slipped  
away.

Pain - and consciousness - ebbing away, I forced my eyes open and I  
watched the clouds quickly come into view as we rose up into the skies.  
The sun was rising, and warmed my face as I stared out the window; dawn  
was so beautiful. It occured to me that I had to ration my sunshine,  
now, as apparently my sunshine days were numbered...

_Oh, stop being such a pathetic loser, Yuffie Kisaragi._

With the rising sun on my face, Gongaga behind me and Wutai before me,  
I once again succumbed and fell asleep.


	3. Chapter Two

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

**Chapter Two  
**

The airship flight probably sucked and was bumpy, but I knew nothing of  
this. I was asleep most of the time, mainly due to Every Pharmacist's  
Friend Vincent Valentine, who had the foresight to dope me up so that I was  
comatose through the entire thing. This was wise, as every moment I was  
lucid, it was to loudly cast disparaging remarks on his sexual history,  
sexual preferences, and most likely future sexual partners. (It  
involved a lot of chocobo breeding.) Then I went right back to sleep.

I woke when I felt myself being lifted, and as it was, I wasn't too  
happy at all. I was wearing a grotty long t-shirt and a pair of loose  
pants, and I hadn't washed in days, and I reeked of sickness and sweat  
- and other things. My leg gave a very painful twinge as it was moved,  
and I yelped.

"What're you doin'?" I snapped grumpily to my captor.

Vincent looked down at me. "We've arrived in Wutai. We're just outside  
the town... We haven't been able to rig up anything for you yet, so I'm  
carrying you."

I rolled my eyes. He sounded so... _stupid sensible!_ I didn't have to  
put up with him being sensible much longer, though; soon he'd bugger  
off and I could be left to die in peace.

It was a sunny day, hot in the depths of a Wutaian summer; the dust off  
Da Chao was thick and fragrant in the air, mixing with the scent of the  
_sakura_ and faint cooking smells from cooking pots. I could hear the  
river-like chatter of the market women speaking in fast, rapid Wutaian,  
and I cringed.

Home...

"Take me back," I suddenly begged, clinging to Vincent, my leg hanging  
like a stone across his arm. "Take me back. I don't want to be here."

He glanced down at me, garnet eyes expressionless, and I felt like  
beating him against his chest. Damnit! I didn't want to be here, didn't  
want to show myself, sick and a failure to the people who had brought  
me up and trained me. Did Vincent have any heart whatsoever? Probably  
not - just a stone. Or a mechanized lump.

Whacking his chest exhausted me and I slumped against him, half-burying  
my dirty, streaked face in his shoulder, concentrating on the screaming  
pain so that I did not have to see the astonished faces of my people as  
he carried me through the main street. A range of smells and noises  
assaulted me now, all of them achingly familiar, and the weak sap I  
was, I felt like crying.

I heard a burst of noise overhead and strained up to see the Highwind  
taking off, soaring into the azure sky. My heart sank. "What the fuck's  
he doing, taking off?" I demanded, noticing for the first time the  
rucksack on Vincent's back.

"He will be back later," he answered flatly. "I will be helping you  
settle for a few days."

"Oh, how goddamn _great_. Vincent Valentine, all-around allstar and hero  
nurse. Someone get me some euthanasia right now."

"Yuffie."

I whipped my head around.

My father was standing in the middle of the street, arms slightly  
outstretched, two white patches running through his black hair peppered  
with grey. His face was unlined, except for the faint impression of  
wrinkles at his eyes where he scrunched them up when he smiled; he was  
looking at me as if I was an ancient treasure, and then he scooped me  
up forcefully out of Vincent's arms, talking in frantic Wutaian.

"Two years," he said tightly. "Two long years, Yuffie, with me not  
knowing whether you were alive or dead, caught in limbo - we looked for  
you for so long but all we could find were rumours of your passing  
through - and now, here you are..."

"About to die," I cut in. "Don't start with the sentimentality, Godo. I  
came here to cark it."

"You are a very silly girl," he said to me severely.

"Thank you."

He looked at me, exasperated, laser-death in his eyes, and I glared  
back the same until Vincent coughed politely.

Godo nodded grimly. "Let's get you to Asako."

He passed me back over to Vincent like a sack of potatoes, and I made  
angry squawking noises all the way to Grandma's house.

* * *

I'd better get my facts straight: Asako isn't my _real_ grandmother.  
Everybody in Wutai just calls her Grandma Asako, that's all. She  
delivered most of us and is as old as the hills, though she doesn't  
truly look it; she has a beautiful face, although you can see it's aged now,  
and has the most amazing hair. It's snowy white and falls down to her  
hips, though she ties it up in a tight bun; she used to let me help her  
wash it as a little girl, with her special shampoo made out of honey...

All in the past now. Vincent brought me in and Asako made Godo wait  
outside. I was glad of that - he had not properly seen my wasted leg  
yet.

"What have you done to yourself?" she demanded, the moment Vincent  
hauled me into her hut. "Girl, I can't patch up everything!"

"Hello to you, too, Grandma," I said mildly.

"Don't 'hello Grandma' me," she spat, but her eyes were softening.  
"Hmph... Boy, put her down on the bed, will you?"

"'Boy'?" I said, absolutely delighted, looking up at the aforementioned  
'boy'. "Vincent, _boy_? I like that. Okay, boy, put me down gently, if  
you hurt my leg I'll knock your head off, good b - " Vincent stopped me  
with an Evil Patented Death Glare Made To Shame Yuffie Into Submission.  
" - Okay, okay, I'll stop, just stop looking at me like that, okay?  
Gawwwd, if looks could kill..."

I looked pointedly away as Asako hiked my pant leg up and began  
removing the bandages, a tight lump coming into my throat. The leg  
stank of rotting flesh, and I dared myself to look away as long as I  
could; finally, I succumbed.

It was swollen in a range of colours, green-yellow-angry red, with long  
marbled streaks of pus where the claws had dragged. There were livid  
deep green marks where my veins were located, and it hurt just to look  
at it, swollen to double it's size, a lump of putrid flesh rather than  
a leg. I could feel my heartbeat in it, trying to pump blood where it  
wouldn't go any more. Asako went to a drawer and professionally removed  
a knife.

"Idiot girl, my sweet Yuffie-chan," she muttered gently. "I could  
remove it for you now and could help you recover within a week."

"_No_, Grandma, and that's final."

"Very well, then. Vincent, can you hold her down?"

"_Nani_?"

"Ah... would it not be wiser to dull her pain first?"

"I don't want her getting hooked on those newfangled pills. She'll end  
up with a pill addiction. Hold her down."

I felt Vincent's strong arms on my shoulders and I began to thrash out  
of panic. Asako grabbed my ankle firmly and looked me straight in the  
eye. "Don't be silly, Yuffie. I'm just going to pack herbs in your  
wounds. I have to drain the pus for that. It won't take long." She  
brandished a bowl at me.

"O-okay," I said hesitantly. Just a little cutting. I could handle  
that. "But you don't have to get Evilman to hold me down."

"Yes, I do," she said firmly. "Now, on the count of six, I'm going to  
open your wounds, all right?"

"Nuh-uh!" I protested. "I'm not falling for this again. You did it all  
before with my loose teeth. You get to about 'two' then you pull."

She shook her head. Her brown eyes were so soft and gentle, the exact  
colour of cinnamon, easily trusted. "No. I need you to be prepared this  
time. I'm going to count to six, and on six, I want you to tense up.  
All right?"

The explanation was sound, so I nodded.

"Ready? One... two..."

She sliced down with the knife deftly into the first bloated wound. I  
screamed at the mind-blowing pain and bit down on somebody's hand -  
maybe it was mine, I couldn't think at first - as Asako let the pus  
drain into the bowl. I remember babbling, calling her an evil liar;  
then she started again with the second and I gnawed desperately at the  
flesh. After what seemed like an eternity, I looked up with glazed  
eyes. Asako was packing something cool and green and paste-like into  
the open wounds and Vincent was busily nursing a bloodied hand.

"I apologize," Asako said smoothly to Vincent. "She can be quite savage  
at times. Want a bandage?"

"No, Grandma," he said absently. Geez, she was _everybody's_ grandma. "It  
will stop bleeding in a moment."

"Wasn't my fault," I said blearily. "You were stupid enough to stick  
your hand in my mouth."

"You looked like you were going to bite through your tongue."

"You would've preferred that. Then I couldn't have said anything for  
the next few days."

"... pity I didn't think of that earlier..."

"Be nice, children," Asako said mildly, bandaging up my leg. It felt  
much cooler now, all that annoying painful heat was gone; maybe the  
swelling was even going down. It felt much better. I felt a pang of  
hope - maybe something _could_ be done.

Godo had stood silently at the door, but now he advanced forward and  
nodded to Asako. "I'll take her home now," he said firmly.

"I'm sleepin' in _my_ house," I protested. Like hell I would sleep in his!  
All I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and cuddle my collection of  
threadbare soft toys and cry a lot. "You got me in Wutai, but I'm  
damned if I'm sleeping in your big ugly drafty shell."

"_Yuffie -_ "

"I think it would be wiser for Yuffie to sleep in her own house  
tonight," Vincent corrected him. "She can settle in easier that way."

Both men looked at each other, gazes locking, a contest of wills. It  
was being in between a rock and another rock.

"For tonight," Godo finally said. Nobody could look into Vincent's  
blood-red eyes for long, even my dad. "Then she is moving into _my_  
house."

"My ass I'm moving into your house!"

"Yes! You are moving into my house or I will have your ass!"

"_Godo!_"

Asako threw her hands up. "Out," she said dramatically. "All of you. I  
can't take you for more than one second. Vincent, stay with Yuffie and  
give her her medicine. Yuffie, do whatever Vincent says. Godo, do  
whatever _I_ say."

"Yes, grandma," we chorused sullenly.

"Good. Now get _out_."

* * *

I sat watching the moon out the window, the house darkened save for a  
few lamps scattered around my room, finishing off some absolutely vile  
tea Asako had prescribed for me. I was quite proud - I'd only thrown it  
up once.

My house had been an absolute pigsty and a dusthole, but Vincent  
'Whirlwind' Valentine, the prig he was, had immediately cleaned it up  
in five minutes and sent me off to have a spongebath. Then he'd managed  
to scrounge me up dinner and give me clean clothes, which was  
incredibly embarrassing. Nobody knows the meaning of pain until they  
have a poker-faced vampire dressed all in black hand you your jammies  
and a pair of underwear and say, "Put these on afterwards."

He was like my mother, only... a man. And... wait, that wasn't right.  
He wasn't motherly, he wasn't affectionate, he was just... _Vincent_.  
Albeit a Vincent who knew where my underwear drawer was located. I'd  
have to have a talk to him about that.

He'd had some fool ideas about staying at the inn, but I set him up in  
my basement with a lot of spare blankets. He couldn't refuse. Who  
could? After all, my basement was cool. It was full of materia and even  
some neato traps he could play with. If he wanted some cages, he  
wouldn't go without.

My cats were fed. The house was clean. I was clean. I was fed. Vincent  
was fed. Vincent was clean. (I think. I wasn't about to check.)

How cutely homey. Where the hell did I go from here?

"Watching the stars?"

"Mmhmm." I didn't even have to turn around. "Wutai always has the best  
night sky. Isn't it pretty?"

He looked at it for a long time and after a while, as if pondering, he  
nodded. "Yes. It is pretty." Just like that, as if it was a gospel  
truth out of a bible. No superfluous adjectives. "Are you going to go  
to bed now?"

I set my cup down on the windowsill, empty. It had made me feel warm  
and empty and very tired. "Yeah, I think so. Gawd, s'been a long day."  
I began to stand, grabbing on the chair for support.

Vincent whisked me up in his arms before I could attempt to hobble to  
bed, moving me across the room and pulling open my sheets before  
tucking me in. "Don't put any weight on that leg," he warned. "Call me  
if you feel ill."

"That's going to be one, continuous call, then," I grumbled. "Jus' go  
to bed, Vincent. Are you going to sleep in your bed or are you going to  
hang upside down from the pipes?"

He looked at be blandly.

"Okay, okay. Goodnight, Vincent."

"... goodnight."

He disappeared downstairs, snuffing out the lamps as he did so.

I stayed awake for a little while after that, the tight feeling of his  
arms around me. Men didn't touch me much, and although Vincent was hazy  
in the category of men, I ain't made of stone. Hell, I didn't mind him  
carrying me that much. It was even sort of ero -

No _way_ was I going there. Rolling over onto my back with a sigh,  
I made a mental note to never drink Asako's tea ever again. It made my  
brain do funny things.


	4. The First Month

**Sunshine In Winter**

* * *

_the first month_

You know, Vincent's a fascinating person. Talking to him or learning  
about him has never failed to get a rise out of me, whether it's been  
wide-eyed anger at the entire universe that it allows people to _do_  
things like that to other people, or the urge to grab him by the  
shoulders and shake him until all his bottled-up hurt fell out into his  
lap.

We're two incredibly different people that way, almost completely polar  
opposites. Like Wutai and Icicle Inn. Or Midgar and the City of the  
Ancients. Black and white, winter and summer, any other lameass  
contrasts I can come up with. He's introverted and I'm extroverted,  
which is a fancy way of saying that he's dead quiet and I'm annoying.  
Vincent keeps all his thoughts and complicated shit on the inside,  
whereas I shout it out to the world and wear it like a medal on my  
chest. He doesn't get hurt because he doesn't tell anybody anything. I  
don't get hurt because I tell everybody everything and nothing can  
surprise me any more after that.

...Neither of us want to get hurt. Similarity number one.

I get angry like a thunderstorm, one moment sunny before rolling over  
into a nightmare-black spurt of wild anger before it dies down again  
into fluffy white clouds. Vincent's more like a volcano, simmering  
beneath the earth slowly, then exploding forever relentlessly when he  
can't hold it in any more. We both get angry, but it's seemingly the  
only emotion he carries willingly; the rest of the time he's stuck  
behind some sort of wall that nobody can breach. But, like I said, we  
both get angry, so that's normal, I suppose? Human?

Maybe that's what makes me so interested. I've always been as curious  
as a wild ferret, and he gives the impression of a wall with ten  
million desperately amazing scary things behind it. That's not a good  
impression to give to me. I'll be attempting to pound against the wall  
and shove myself over it just to see whether I get burnt. That's why  
I've always found Valentine so interesting. I want to tug him open to  
see how he ticks, his motives, his wants, whilst still leaving him  
intact at the same time. He's the complete opposite from the ol'  
Yuffster, but I see flashes there - within him - that sort of remind me  
of me.

...Gawd. I _must_ be sick, if I'm going on like this. Next thing you  
fucking know, I'll be wearing a cape and starting to have a red fetish.  
I'm already using the bad metaphors, so I'm half-gone anyway.

Anyway, back to more interesting shit than the ramblings I'd never  
bother to tell him myself. I think he already knows them. I mean, when  
you live in a coffin for a bunch of years, you must exhaust all forms  
of thought, right? Maybe that's why he's so quiet. He doesn't have  
anything to talk about!

...I'm an idiot, aren't I? Yes, I thought so.

* * *

"Aghhhhh," I moaned incoherently, followed up by the witty "Uhhhhhnnn,"  
and the articulate "Oh, _gods_."

There are many things I've done in my life that have not been exactly  
fun. I have fought monsters, fought men, fought calamities from the  
skies, fought one-winged angels; now, the most vicious monster of them  
all, I fought the raging desire to vomit up everything I'd ever eaten  
into my toilet. My ribs ached with dry heaves, nausea still assailing  
me even when I'd let go of everything I could possibly let go of. There  
was nothing left to cough up.

My stomach told me differently and one more I coughed and hacked over  
the brown-cracked porcelain, leaning back against the wall with a low  
groan. At this rate my teeth would be dissolved by my own stomach acid  
and they'd have to make me dentures to bury me with.

"Yuffie, where are you?"

I panicked and my stomach immediately found something else to get rid  
of. "I'm in the bathroom," I squeaked. Damnit! I'd managed to hide the  
fact that I couldn't keep anything down for weeks by wearing baggy  
clothes and trying to keep my vomiting schedule to when he was out -  
the bastard -never- slept - and if Vincent knew about this now he'd  
haul me off so quick to Asa you wouldn't see my butt for a trail of  
dust.

His hand tried the handle, pausing as he found it was locked. "What are  
you doing?"

"I'm having a bath."

Pause, and then the sigh I'd been hearing so often lately, his fingers  
most likely rubbing at his temples. "Yuffie, you are not having a  
bath."

"How do YOU know, huh? Do you have x-ray vision? If you do, you're  
getting out of my house, you pervert. Imagine, all the times I let you  
see me dressed and you could peep through my clothes - "

"Yuffie, I know you are not having a bath because the tin bath is still  
hanging up over here on the hook. That, and I have no idea how you  
would get yourself in a bath with your leg. So you have just lied to  
me."

"Well, DUH!" If he badgered me any longer I was just going to have to  
vomit, not giving a damn whether he heard me or not. Oh, _damnit_, it  
hurt. Fuck off, Vincent Valentine.

With great effort and quick thinking of un-retchy thoughts, the desire  
to vomit was subsiding, so I tried to innocently pull the chain on the  
rickety old toilet and unlocked the door, waltzing out as gracefully as  
when you're on crutches will allow you. Godo had made 'em for me. He  
really didn't have enough to do. "See? What're you worrying about? I  
was just in the loo, for the love of everything holy. You're becoming  
paranoid as well as overprotective."

Vincent had eventually given up all pretense that he was going to leave  
and moved in semi-permanently to my little house. Asako had reasoned  
out that he was worried about my welfare. I reasoned out that he was  
either nuts-nuts-cuckoo or a budding masochist. He'd had a good job  
back in Gongaga, and he'd told me he had been quite happy there, which  
was an unusual experience for him. Why had he given all that up to  
babysit a foul-mouthed corpse who was obviously not grateful at all  
about the situation?

He'd even taken to wearing some of Godo's old clothes from when my  
father had actually had abdominal muscles, to fit in with the rest of  
the community. Dressed in the yukata and with his hair up in a  
ponytail, there were many Wutaian women who definitely considered him  
fitting well into the community and probably entertained thoughts of  
fitting him in closer than that. (I wasn't among them.)

"Now, _there's_ a boy who can leave his shoes under my bed any time,"  
Asako had pronounced gleefully.

I hobbled over to the counter and downed some water to take the  
disgusting taste out of my mouth. Damnit, these crutches weren't  
_working_ any more. The pain seemed to be spreading to my hip as well.  
Spreading, spreading, just like Bannon had said. Damn doctor, why'd he  
have to be right?

"Whuddid - " I swallowed. "What did Grandma say about my medication?"

"You have to take new anti-infection pills. Asako wanted them taken  
right away - she says that the poison's beginning to spread."

Hmph. Asako. I hadn't even hobbled in front of her yet. She could  
probably smell pain from another island.

"Like a bad genital disease." I stretched and huddled into my crutches  
painfully. "That's just depressing, Vincent."

He unfurled his hand, three white round pills laying in the palm of it.  
"Take these. They'll be what's going to keep you from fainting when you  
move too much."

I popped them down deftly and swigged my water, watching his eyes  
carefully. The words were horrid, but he was like a creature made out  
of marble, watching me as if to make sure I didn't keel over any  
moment.

"Oh, God!" I choked slightly as I accidentally tasted bitterness,  
gagging as I attempted to swallow. "Ugh! This tastes like _shit_! Why  
does medicine always have to taste like industrial waste?" I saw his  
eyes begin to twinkle, the closest Vincent approximation of a slight  
smile, and I choked at him pathetically, drinking even more. "You're  
just horrible. You made them taste bad on purpose. You get off on it."

"...I've taken a good few pills in my time, Yuffie." He sat down in the  
chair by my bed, his usual haunt; I had this horrible feeling that he  
sometimes watched me sleep there. "None of them have ever tasted good."

"Pills?" I was immediately interested. "You? When?"

I could see him hesitate. "The Turks have a strict regimen."

Now, that was cool. If he never talked about his history he talked  
about being a Turk even less. I could see him as a Turk; smooth and  
deadly and lethal. I hobbled myself over to his chair and collapsed on  
my bed, ignoring the twinge of pain from my leg. "Vitamins and things?"

"Yes. And stimulants." Vincent looked like he regretted telling me, his  
eyes going faraway, back down the years when he had obviously donned  
the suit. "I never liked that part of it much... why are you so interested?"

"Don't know." My hand went up to tug at a lock of his hair; it was to  
his credit that by now his immediate reaction wasn't to back away when  
somebody had the gall to touch him. It was probably because he knew he  
wouldn't have to put up with me much longer. "Just wondering what you  
were like. You wore a suit? How'd you wear your hair? Did you wear a  
tie?"

"Yes, short, yes."

"You killed a bunch of people, right? Was it short cropped or all that  
gross style where you shave it at the bottom and have a big hunk of  
hair at the top? Did you wear funny ties? No, wait, you're Vincent,  
you're not funny. Wait. Were you funny back then?"

He sighed. "Yes... um... no, and no. You would make a rather good  
interrogator, Yuffie."

"Ooh! You made a funny! Look, look, Vincent made a funny! It wasn't a  
very good funny, but it was still a funny!"

Vincent looked at me piercingly.

"Sorry. I know you don't like talking about it."

"Remembering about it, Yuffie," he said gently. "Being a Turk wasn't a  
noble job, or an easy job, or even a very good job. It's the part of my  
life I would prefer to leave behind." He looked above my head, off into  
the distance. "Although every moment of my life I may be a trained  
killer, I will treasure the moments I manage to place it out of my  
mind."

_Whoooooooah!_ It was a friggin' SPEECH!

"Well, you don't look like a killer." I looked at him seriously. "Not  
even the dark hair and the red eyes and the big claw and the I'm-gonna-  
kill-you look you - well, um, actually..."

"I frighten people."

"Not me," I assured him. "Nothing frightens me any more."

For some reason, he took the effort to move his good hand out and pat  
my shoulder cryptically. "Then I have achieved much. Asako wants to see  
you at lunch. Why don't you have a bath?"

"Are you saying I smell?"

"...Yes."

"You know, Vincent, friends lie to one another."

"Ah. Then, you don't smell."

"...I hate you."

_Two_ funnies in one day! He was on a roll!

* * *

Like I said, he's fascinating - both to talk to and to look at. Oh, not  
like that; I mean, he's hot and all (but he's _Vincent_ to boot), it's  
just that every time I look at him carefully there's something more  
about him I want to know. Who gave him -that- scar? Why does he carry  
his hand that way? Is that the flash of a tattoo I saw? A lot of  
things.

I guess when you're stuck in one place a lot of the time with the same  
people you become obsessed with dissection of the tiny. And when you've  
got a little death clock ticking over your head, you have a raging urge  
to find out the why now instead of the vague later.

Nobody would have ever pegged me and Vincent as friends, I suppose.  
They would say, well, Yuffie's going to drive Vincent bananas, and he's  
going to make her insane because of his long depressed silences.  
Besides, my history's consisted of mainly learning to steal a lot and  
putting up with my tourist trap of a city, and his is more full of death  
and blood and lust and passion than a bad romance novel where the  
hero's called Biff. We haven't got anything in common...

Except that we're both very contrary people. So we ignore the fact that  
I'm more obnoxious than a barrel of monkeys and that he's more angsty  
than a female preteen and decide to get along just for the hell of it.

Which is why I thought he should go home. Out of all my friends, out of  
AVALANCHE, he is the one I am most rubbed up the wrong way by seeing me  
wither. I don't want him to be my nursemaid, watching me blow away into  
dust. Can't he remember me the way I was, instead of a bundle of ribs  
and materia?

Ribs and materia - hah! That was all I was nowadays. Gone were the days  
when I'd looked myself in a mirror and actually believed I had come to  
maturity. Now my body looked like I did when I was twelve again,  
stick-thin legs (well, ONE stick-thin leg; the other one was swollen so  
bad it actually looked normal) with no waist and no hips and my breasts  
looked incongruous, something healthy and full stuck on a little-girl's  
body. I'd lost my tan, too. I bloody looked _grey._

My mother had looked like that before she died.

Back in the days when you couldn't even hope for a cure for double  
pneumonia and by the end of it she looked like a scarecrow, that  
beautiful long dark hair lank and heavy against her pillow; her wrists  
were even slimmer than mine and I remember somebody crying "Oh,  
Michiko, it's an ugly, ugly way to die."

The unselfish road.. to order him home and not ever having to watch an  
ugly slow death. Not to have even _more_ fucking reason to atone  
another goddamn sin and mope the rest of his too-long life. Spare him a  
truck full of pain.

But I'm Yuffie Kisaragi, and I was born to be selfish. And, in the end,  
I'd rather have him than anybody else hold my hand. I hope you're up to  
it, my friend.

...I've gone off topic again. I never could hold my concentration for  
more than five seconds.

Bugger!

* * *

"Yuffie, you aren't eating."

I looked up in surprise. I hadn't thought she'd noticed. I was using my  
specialised technique from my childhood years when my father and mother  
had forced vegetables on me.

"I'm... not very hungry, Grandma. I had a big breakfast."

Asako put down her chopsticks and raised a smooth white brow at me  
before turning to Vincent. "She did?"

"I saw her making noodles this morning."

Oh, good for Vincent. Then he'd gone out and I'd barfed them up. "See?  
I ate! Stop trying to mother me! I'm totally okay and everything!"

"Have you been drinking my tea?"

Yes, though it wasn't exactly working any more. "Can I up the dosage,  
Grandma? It hurts."

"Half a teaspoon extra. No more than that. You've taken your pills?"

"Yeah. They tasted like shit, Grandma."

She sniffed. "Obviously. Doctors think that to make good medicine it  
has to taste bad. I've always considered mine tasty."

"Except that tea," I muttered, and rearranged the noodles in my bowl  
into interesting shapes.

Vincent turned around to me, pushing my bowl firmly towards my  
chopsticks. "Yuffie, just one spoonful. Please?" he added, unnecessarily.

Perhaps I could do it. Gawd, I was hungry. My stomach felt pinched and  
tight but at the same time I knew that at any moment, with something in  
it, I could be examining my guts again. My blood was pounding in my  
veins unnaturally hard, making me bilious.

I carefully lifted the bowl closer to my mouth, teasing a small portion  
of noodles out and popping them between my lips. Chew chew chew.  
Attempt to swallow -

My only defence was to spit the noodles out immediately, flailing back  
in my chair until I hit the ground. It didn't hurt much, not anymore;  
my leg's pain was a pounding drumbeat whose rhythm was now blended  
inexorably in my mind with living. I lay on my back and dry-retched  
until Vincent picked me up, fumbling with me slightly because he had  
prepared his arms for a much heavier weight. I was featherlight. Ribs  
and materia, ribs and materia -

"Bring her over here," Asako snapped. I could barely hear her as I  
closed my eyes, dizzy and half-fainting. "Put her on the bed, Vincent."

He did as he was obeyed. Couldn't care less any more; just like a  
million other times over the past few weeks, I just wanted to _die_ and  
get it over with, to stop being tired and ill and utterly, utterly  
pathetic, to stop seeing Vincent's darkblood eyes pierce into me  
wherever I went, as if trying to see the sickness; wanted to stop  
taking medicine and pills. Was this some sort of retribution? Destroying  
Sephiroth? Not being able to save Aeris? Getting anywhere close  
to Jenova? Hell, maybe it was just payback for all the times I'd  
gone to vending machines and slipped my hand up them to get a  
free drink -

There was a thin, keening, giggling noise from my throat, a weird sort  
of laugh.

"She's half-hysterical," my Grandma muttered, unbuttoning my shirt,  
then taking a knife to decisively cut through the three vests I'd put  
on so that nobody would notice my lack of shape. "She's - Gods above!  
Little more than bones! Vincent, how long has she been unable to keep  
down food?"

"I have no idea." His voice was tight. "She's been trying to keep it  
from me. I think she was doing this this morning."

"She looks like she's been off food for weeks! And she told nobody!  
Fool! Silly child!" To my utter surprise and not a little despair,  
Asako burst into tears.

I forced my hand into hers, fluttering my eyelids open, smiling at her  
weakly as the nausea ebbed. "S'okay, Grandma. Don't cry... don't tell  
Dad anything 'bout this, though? Please?"

"It'd probably kill him as well as you," she gasped roughly, drying her  
eyes, her hands running down my oversized ribs and slightly swollen  
stomach, angry because I hadn't fed it. Fragile bones and twinges of  
pain when she ran her hands over my bandages on my leg.

"I had no idea." It was Vincent's voice. Deep normally, now it was  
husking so low as to be almost inaudible. "I failed - "

"Shut up, Vincent! What're you talkin' about? None of it your fault,  
silly bastard." I tried to sit up, but then realized I was sort of  
half-naked and blushed. "Gawd! Can't a girl get some clothes over  
here?"

Vincent buttoned my shirt back up briskly, his warm fingers brushing up  
against my ribs with every button, managing to do it admirably quickly  
with one hand and serving to make me twice as embarrassed as I was  
before.

"Have you been vomiting up everything?" Asako asked me softly, brushing  
my dark hair away from my forehead.

I nodded. "Can't keep it down. I tried. Just won't work."

"Well, no wonder your tea hasn't been working. You need to take it with  
food as well."

"Am I gonna die, Grandma?"

"If you don't eat soon? Most likely yes. And starvation isn't a nice  
way to go."

"At least it'd be quicker than dragon infection," I said mournfully.

There was a sharp pain around my wrist as her hand encircled it  
tightly. "You're a fool, Yuffie-chan. You think we're going to let you  
die so easily? Die at all? Never! So put those silly thoughts out of  
your head and stop hurting everybody with them."

As if I was a little girl once more, I hung my head in shame.

"What do we do, Grandma?" Vincent once more, soft and not a little  
worried.

"I'll make some new tea. And change her bandages, at least." Oh, yay.  
More cutting. I hoped Vinnie's fingers were ready. "Then, it's up to  
her. The tea will help, but she's got to make herself hungry and stop  
believing she's going to throw up. Sickness is three-quarters belief,  
Vincent Valentine."

He nodded, soft and fluid.

"Cynics shouldn't get sick, then," I grumbled. "No wonder Cid's so  
healthy, even though he drinks and smokes like a chimney - "

"Shush, you." She began unravelling my bandages and I immediately  
gripped Vincent's good hand. "After this, Vincent, take her home."

I think I was imagining things, but Vincent's fingers in mine were even  
more tense and nervous than my own.

* * *

The next few days could, most likely, be counted as some of the most  
dreadful in my life. Worse than the first re-adjustment to the pain in  
my leg; worse than camping out in the Northern Crater, listening to the  
howls of monsters; worse than the time I fell off Da Chao and hung by  
the seat of my pants on a bush for a couple of hours until my father  
found me. Then again, when you're going through mind-numbing pain, it  
always seems worse than the times before - and being found squalling at  
ten years old on a bush, crying your eyes out as your father took you  
home, was pretty horrid at the time.

I attempted to eat, I really did. I tried hard, but even forcing myself  
to swallow just brought on pain and nausea and me vomiting once more. I  
drank Asako's tea, lying on my bed most of the time as moving didn't  
help the nausea any, and I caught a cold because of my defenceless  
immune system.

Damn my stupid body!

Vincent was a constant shadow by my side, handing me bowls, taking them  
away, watching me intently as I broke into cold sweats. The poison and  
the starvation melded into one glorious whole until I was delirious  
when I slept, rolling and crying and scratching until things bled. He  
used to hold my hands so that I couldn't get at myself, as if I was a  
mental patient. Vincent was my straitjacket.

It could have only lasted a week, but it seemed like a dozen years, and  
I think I aged that much. By the end of it, I was convinced that I was  
dying (I probably was), and shook my head no whenever Vincent brought  
me food. Sleeping most of the time helped, a little, but sleep was  
sometimes just hallucination as the poison pumped through my fevered  
veins.

Sick, sweat-stained and skeletal, I lay in my bed as my skin hurt,  
slipping in and out of sleep. I can't even begin to tell you what I saw  
in my visions - old memories, new memories twisted, just natural horrors  
that little children conjure up as the monsters under their beds.  
Imagine, Yuffie Kisaragi, brought to her knees like this when even the  
WEAPONs had not achieved the same?

I think that by the end, my dearest wish was to get up, search among  
Vincent's things and blow my brains out with Death Penalty. I'd imagine  
my nurse probably sheltered those thoughts too, but he never got angry  
with me, not once; just held my hand when I sobbed and kept me from  
hurting myself when I slept. It must have been a job that didn't let  
him sleep, full-time Yuffiewatch, boring and sad as hell. I couldn't  
have done it myself.

"Yuffie."

The voice came from far away, but the slow stream of consciousness  
reassured me that it could not be delusion; something was pressed  
against my lips. Not quite knowing what I was doing or even what the  
hell was happening, I opened my mouth and tasted what was there, just a  
little.

Apple was there, warm, and sugar, and a spice that was tantalizingly  
familiar but I could not name. Wait, cinnamon; there it was. Cinnamon.

"My mother used to feed me this." Velvet and soft, his voice was like  
music. "When I was young and I was sick. She'd let me cut the skins  
off, because I didn't like them."

I let the sweetness of the sugar and the warmth behind of the fruit  
ease my mouth, which had previously felt like a bag of gravel.

"When I was sick, and when I was unhappy, as a child... it always went  
away. Just eat a little, Yuffie, please..."

_Well, what the hell. Close to the end here. Why not?_ My teeth  
moving down with effort, I broke off a piece of the warm fruit, and  
chewed it just slightly. Warm and soft and fragrant, it didn't need  
much effort, and I coughed as I swallowed my first piece. Gods knew I  
wanted to eat this, probably more than anything else, and although I  
felt the first pangs in my stomach I clenched my fists to help me force  
them back.

His fingers were warm, hand-feeding me, urging me onward. "I was much  
smaller than you, ten years younger, and I think you were much stronger  
a child than I ever was. Dropped things - only thing I had was my aim."

I finally managed to open my eyes. His own were intent, pleading, his  
face set with worry. Vincent was wearing a black shirt with the sleeves  
rolled up, and his long hair was loose but for a meagre attempt at tying it  
back with a white scrap bandanna. A small plate was gripped in his  
claw, held in his lap, and he sat on my bed. With great effort, I took  
another bite, because every time I did his face relaxed. I'd never  
heard Vincent talk so much, or seen him let his face show so very much  
emotion, or be so gentle.

"Yes... that's it, Yuffie." More, slowly, into my mouth, until he just  
gave me the whole piece. "Eat."

The effort of it was killing me, but I opened my lips again as he  
brought another piece to them. I ate like a helpless kitten, from his  
hand; not a romantic action, as some might think it, but a mere grasp  
just to stay alive. Barely tasting it after a while, I was crying,  
tears running slowly down my cheeks. I didn't even know why. I just  
think that he was so soft, so very un-Vincent, I had to weep.

I finished all he gave me and he wiped my tears away with the back of  
his hand as I swallowed. "Are you going to be sick?"

_No._ I shook my head.

His response was to nod grimly, a little bit more Vincentness creeping  
back as the crisis was averted. "...I'm proud of you."

"T-thank you," I rasped, pathetic. My eyes were fluttering shut again.  
I was so very tired.

"Go to sleep. I'll be here."

I knew I loved him then. Not romantic love, not exactly, because that  
was too trite and too silly for everything he had given up for me; I  
don't think any part of it was physical, what I felt. Just love, in  
undiluted form, and gratitude, and - it's impossible to describe: just  
the knowing that somebody is there who you've wanted there all your  
life. Don't get the wrong end of the stick - it wasn't the sort of  
feeling you reserve for your lover. It was... argh! Why do I have to be  
so awful with words?

Forgive me. Get the wrong idea if you want. All I knew, before I  
drifted off into delirium-free sleep, was that Vincent Valentine was my  
most favourite person in the world.


	5. The Second Month

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

_the second month  
_

**A/N:** Before I go on, I would just like to state that I must have some  
of the coolest reviewers on earth. Without you bunch, I would have  
crawled back into my tiny little hole and probably spent the rest of my  
life writing Minesweeper fanfic or something (not that Minesweeper  
fanfic is anything other than fascinating). This fanfic owes much to  
those patient people who waited out the long months inbetween my  
writer's block, and I'd just like to cheer you. Thank you all from the  
bottom of my heart.

Oh, and as always, for my no-good worthless beta-reader Piett, who  
waxed wroth loudly.

* * *

Usually, in fairytales, when somebody goes through a bad illness and  
is later rescued from their own pugnaciousness from a knight in shining  
armour, they immediately make an amazing breakthrough and get up the  
very next morning all chipper and ready to continue on, because as  
everybody will instinctively know, _today _is the _first day _of the _rest of  
their life!_

In reality? I was bedridden for two weeks eating only very tiny bowls  
of weak chicken broth as my shrunken stomach got used to being fed  
again. Vincent used to sit there and spoonfeed me, and carry me to the  
bathroom, and wash me. Yes, he saw me naked, and touched me naked,  
and undressed and redressed me when the situation called for it. And quite  
possibly it's the most humiliating and unromantic thing I've ever been  
through. As a girl who'd been so fiercely independent as to wander  
around the world with only herself and Materia for company, to now only  
be able to move being carried by somebody else was not in any way fun  
or exciting.

Vincent and I formed a parasitic relationship in those days. We  
basically had to, for me to survive. And he was so good to me I think I  
cried sometimes, as he tried to not make me feel bad about it, making  
light of the fact that I was so helpless that he had to help me clean  
myself in the bath. It wasn't even as if I even had ego left to be  
grateful to him - the first time he did it, I was so horrified I couldn't  
even talk at first, ashamed and hating him and hating myself even more  
and wishing that the dragon had just _eaten _me.

"Yuffie." I still remember the warmth of his good hand, the other a  
steadying golden presence on the side of the tin tub, as he worked soap  
into my shoulders with a sponge. I hadn't answered him, so his only  
words were a soft, "Pull your arms back."

I stubbornly refused, looking straight ahead, defiant in my  
listlessness.

"Does it hurt?"

Again silence.

"Yuffie?"

"I'm not wearing anything," I eventually burst out, voice thin and  
reedy and _whiny._

"That's usually the case when bathing," Vincent said dryly, but  
withdrew his hand. "Are you uncomfortable with me seeing you  
naked?"

"I'm so _ugly,_" I spat, "ugly and..." _and I don't want you of all people  
to see me like this but you have already and I hate it more than  
anything._

"You're a bit thin," he commented lightly, "but not bad."

I rasped a little, my equivalent of a laugh, catching a bit of humour  
around the lines of his mouth, relaxing slightly in his presence.  
"Valentine, you lie like a cheap watch."

"And so do you," he countered cryptically, rolled his shirtsleeves  
higher up on his elbows and filled a jug with the bathwater. I made a  
slight mewl as he tipped it over my head and glared through dripping  
bangs at him. Paying me no mind, he began to soap up my hair with one  
hand, his fingers wiping the wet locks out my eyes, and making sure  
none of the bubbles got in them. At first I had been half-crying in  
humiliation, but now the tears that were threatening to drip down my  
cheeks were those of desperate love that I couldn't even understand  
properly.

I raised one hand, using all the effort I could, to grip the sponge in  
my weak fingers. He cast his eyes away from my chest chivalrously but I  
was already broken. I didn't care whether he saw my breasts or me naked  
any more, it didn't matter; and in that I felt even worse, because what  
little confidence I had about the way I looked went down the gurgler. I  
think that Vincent, with his beautiful blessed sixth sense about me,  
knew this.

"...I'm sorry about this."

"About what?" My fingers fumbled with the sponge and my arm hurt  
already but I managed to use it, slight and clumsy.

"You being naked."

"I don't mind. Not any more. Not like... you're offending my sensibilities  
or anything."

"It's immodest," he protested gently, "as we're both grown-up now."

He considered me grown-up. My heart leapt. If he had told me this  
before, before all this happened, I would have had somebody tattoo the  
quote on my chest, and possibly announce to the world news that yes,  
Vincent Valentine considered Yuffie Kisaragi grown up, and by the way,  
the apocalypse is nigh. "You're past it, anyway," I managed to tease,  
voice crackling slightly but I was still able to smile. That in itself  
was victory. "Can't appreciate young girls any more."

"Oh, I can hardly take my hands off you," Vincent deadpanned and gave  
me one of his small smiles, quick and beautiful, the ones he gave so  
rarely it was hard to believe he could ever put on such a facial  
expression but when he did it was like the sun coming up.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said," I told him, and then my lip  
wobbled and I burst into tears.

* * *

After much effort I could use my hands again and move, albeit slowly -  
and usually after too many steps I collapsed, exhausted, on the  
floor in an ungracious heap. Noting this, Vincent confined me to my  
bed, where I soon discovered that there's a reason us dying cripples  
want to _die_ so soon - there's nothing to do but sit and ache.

I remembered sewing lessons as a little girl and did it for the want of  
something better to do, vengefully stabbing thread in and out of a  
piece of soft cotton to embroider. I used to get my Conformer and just  
hold it, in my hands, tracing my fingers across the shining metal and  
wondering if it would ever sail from my hands again. I used to just  
sit, watching the sunlight reflect off it, for hours. At first Vincent  
got nervous when he saw me with something sharp, but what on earth  
could I do with it? He never left me alone enough for me to be able to  
commit anything other than violence crimes against my pillow. He was  
with me almost every hour of the day, rubbing the toes on my injured  
leg because the blood didn't go into them well any more, massaging my  
withered body, telling me stories, brushing my hair.

Nonetheless, I was so bored I was bored _beyond_ death. I was bored  
into a state of zombie-like boredom. My boredom should have been  
sleeping in a coffin for a gazillion years under a mansion, it was that  
bad. So complete was my boredom it went around in an infinite loop and  
eventually even being bored bored me. Lots of things hadn't held my  
attention before, but now even movement seemed overrated and I stared  
up at the ceiling and thought miserably about the days when I had  
frolicked, happy as a clam, out in the wilderness.

Illness gives old memories rose-coloured glasses. I remembered thinking  
about how fun it had been in the Northern Crater and how cuddly  
Tonberries were.

"Yuffie," Vincent said briskly, one day, out of the blue. "I'm going  
back to Gongaga for a while."

"You're _what?_" I asked, in obvious dismay. "You are? I mean - "

"It'll only be for a few days. There are some matters that have been  
brought to my attention."

"Oh," I said miserably.

"Cid's coming in the Highwind. I have your things packed. It's the mild  
part of winter so there isn't much danger."

"Oh."

I paused.

"_My _things packed?"

Vincent raised an eyebrow, as if ingenuous and quizzical, knowing full  
damn well my surprise. My nurse was a teasing asshole, bless his  
demonic little heart. "You don't want to come?"

My weak hand clenched itself into a fist and shot up into the air,  
crowing. "Wooooo_hoooooo!_"

"...I think I'll take that as a yes."

I sat up so quickly Vincent looked startled at the movement, my eyes  
afire, attempting to push back my blanket. "I wanna go see what you  
packed for me! Did you remember a bag for me to barf in? I always do  
on Cid's airship. And did you remember my woolly chocobo? I can't go  
without my woolly chocobo. And a scarf - it'll be cold there - and  
mittens, and my medicine, and - "

"Yuffie, calm _down._" His fingers went to my forehead, then my cheeks,  
checking my pulse. "You'll give yourself a fever."

"Screw _fevers._" I was practically bouncing; only the low thrumming  
natural ache in my leg prevented me from getting up and cartwheeling  
around the room. I did the next best thing, though, catching my arms  
around Vincent's neck and kissing him exuberantly on the cheek. "Oh,  
Vincent, thank you!"

He gently disentangled himself from me, but I knew he was pleased; I  
could see it in the shifting of his mouth. I knew his face so well now;  
sometimes I felt like a Yuffievincentoneonlyall mix-up. Too close to be  
friends or lovers or different cells. One day I was afraid that I would  
love him so much I'd be sucked into him, underneath his skin.

"You need movement, anyway. Asako's been afraid of clots."

"I can't believe Grandma Asa's le - "

"She was the one who recommended - "

"What about - "

"Godo's not happy."

Finishing each other's sentences? I hadn't even noticed. Screw just  
getting under his skin. Soon I'd another aspect of Valentine along with  
the Galian Beast, only less charming and piquantly cute as the  
aforementioned.

"Dad can go screw himself," I said complacently.

"I warn you again - it'll be on an airship."

"Greatest mode of transport known to man. Remind me to give Cid a  
massive whopper on the lips when I see him. And to hug the railing."

"I'm going to have to put you out for the duration," he warned gently.  
"Losing more fluid at this point in time could be a major setback."

"Yes, Doctor. Or should that be 'daddy'? You're like the two rolled  
into one. Plus nurse. And chef. And general entertainment."

"And travel consultant," he said drily, but the fact that he had made a  
joke about it sent my spirits soaring up even further into the sky like  
fireworks. Oh, oh, _happiness._ Yuffie was da bomb.

I told this much to Vincent. He looked nonplussed, and in fact merely  
took my temperature and told me to lie down again or I'd get the flu.  
I didn't care about whether I got flu or whooping cough or Juggler's  
Despair. I was going to _Gongaga!_

...Illness makes you lame. I am no exception.

* * *

"I love you, Cid."

True to his wonderful blessed word, Vincent and my ticket out of  
Wutaihell arrived the weekend after he'd told me. Also true to his  
word, I'd gotten the sniffles due to sheer excitement so palpable I  
was practically peeing my pants (nice use of the letter 'p'). My bones  
ached and my teeth chattered sometimes when I was cold, but the  
thought of a change of scenery did me so good even Vincent relaxed  
a little - enough to not watch me all the time. Hallelujah.

My ticket, who was smoking one of his cancer sticks and looking  
distinctly unimpressed with both my beautific smile and the fact that  
he could see my ribs through my shirt, looked at Vincent. "You ready?"

"I loved you from the day I met you."

"...yes."

"Talky as #&!ing ever, huh?"

"You were like some stubbly, grousing, mean, icky, old, not-quite-  
dishwater-blonde _god._"

"You're lookin' healthy. Obviously hangin' around brats agrees with y'."

"Have I mentioned I _love_ the grand majesty of airships? It was why I  
was always, like, throwing up on it. I was blessing it. Sort of like  
how people do with champagne but yuckier."

"...h'n."

"If you weren't married already, I'd ask Vinnie to bend my knee into  
position and propose on the spot, you know."

Pained looks were appearing on both faces. Ah, unity through one  
common factor - humiliation via me.

"Weird how I always horked up carrots. I never _ate_ carrots."

"...least you know her &!#!ing voicebox still works."

"But anyway, the Highwind is like, the coolest thing ever. The time I  
told you that it was an old bag of bolts that would be more useful  
reinforcing Tifa's bra, I so didn't mean it. And _she_ didn't have to  
threaten to roundhouse-kick me either. It's an adorable old bag of bolts.  
Isn't it, Vincent? Huh? Huh?"

"...when are you going to put her to sleep?"

"...soon."

"You two _suck_," I told them heatedly, and then, stretching out from  
Vincent's arms, I drew the pilot into a clumsy awkward hug. He smelt  
like gasoline and cigarettes. "C'mere, you big ol' lug. I knew I wouldn't  
die without seeing your ugly face again."

"Hate !#&ing sentimentality," Cid growled, but his hand was equally  
awkwardly patting my back, slipping as he brushed me forward and  
letting out a string of vile expletives as he felt me shift in Vincent's  
arms. "Goddamn it all to hell, kid. I can see through you."

"Do I have a sexy liver?"

"You never had a sexy _anythin'_."

"You only find things attractive if they have a joystick and a fuel  
gauge, you chainsmoking old jerk."

He untangled himself from me carefully, as if I might fall to dust if  
he moved too sudden. The look in his eyes was of abject horror and I  
tried to puff out my gaunt cheeks. _Don't feel sorry for me, Highwind.  
Not pity from you._ "Shut up and get aboard my damn airship," Cid  
informed both of us, then stalked back up into the belly of his metal  
monstrosity.

Vincent obeyed, with his curiously smooth walk that made for the least  
amount of rocking when we walked, bad leg stuck out in front of us like  
an ugly battering ram. I'd taken to wearing loose pants that I could  
easily get off; not because I needed to keep the stupid thing warm, but  
because I didn't like seeing it's malignant ugly swollen presence. It was  
like it was pregnant with something I was straining to give birth to.

The same makeshift bed I'd slept on the last time was set up. I admired  
the blankets obediently before raising my arm to Vincent, who was  
already preparing the hypodermic needle. ("Can't you use Materia?"  
I'd whined at first. He'd answered quite curtly that he didn't trust  
magic in _any_ form when it came to medicine; looking at his long list  
of various horrid things happening at the hands of Hojo, I didn't blame  
him. "What about pills?" I'd whined even more plaintively. Short answer -  
they weren't strong enough any more. You have to admire dragons;  
when they want to infect someone, they really _infect _someone. Mad  
props to all you fucking lizards.) I'd used to barf when needles were used,  
possibly as some form of primitive substance-in substance-out ritual.  
Now, I could whistle a couple of tunes as Vincent pried open veins  
to use.

"You'll wake me wh - " I began.

"When the tranquilizer wears off and no earlier," he told me severely,  
expertly flushing a lot of very nice substances into my arm. I immediately  
got the happy, wonderfully numbling flush of drugs, always slightly  
orgasmic as all the pain blurred out and just left dizziness. I lay  
down, pulling the blankets up to my chin. "You need your rest."

"If sleep could cure me, I should've gotten over this thing weeks  
ago," I muttered mutinously, voice going thick as my vision began to  
dim. Vincent was rifling around in one of the bags he'd slung over his  
shoulder, tucking me in efficiently, then placing my silly woolly  
chocobo neatly next to my neck.

"...Vincent, _not in front of Cid,_" I tried to wail, but I was out like a  
light.

* * *

Death and rebirth.

They say sleeping's like that, you know. That and a bunch of other  
things. Sunset. Sunrise. Vomiting. Sex.

(Not that I wanted to think of any of the latter lately; when you're  
coughing up green mucus and even simple emotion makes you all  
sweaty getting a twinge of arousal would've had me in a fainting fit.)

Vincent tucking me in at night, Vincent first thing in the morning.  
Death. Rebirth. Vincent. As natural as breathing.

God, sometimes I wondered _why,_ how this had goddamn happened.  
Why would Vincent take care of a puking squalling dying ninja who he  
had met briefly with (to save the world, no less, but that had no real  
impact) and who he hadn't really liked anyway? Did he think we had  
something in common? Him ageless, timeless, beautiful, unable to die.  
Me tiny, newborn, screaming, unable to live.

It wasn't like he owed me anything. I'd saved his life a buncha  
times, yeah, but he'd done the same for me and so had Tifa and Cloud  
and Aeris (_sweet Aeris what's happening when you gonna come and take  
me away_) and Red and Barret and Cid'n Cait and everything. Was I some  
extension of his friggin' penance, something to do to wash away the sin?

I didn't like that idea. I wasn't good penance. If he wanted to get in  
good with the powers that be he should've just put a pillow over my  
face.

I _think _too much. Why the hell was I doing this to myself? I'd  
stopped questioning Vincent Valentine's motives a long time ago.

Last thing I see at night. First thing I see in the morning. He's like  
some twisted mother-lover-father-deity.

How gloriously grossness. Yuffie two years ago would have considered  
this like water torture. I love it. Young Yuffie, where did you go? Are  
you growing up or are you carkin' it just the same as I am?

* * *

When I woke up, it was back in Dr. Bannon's hospital in Gongaga with  
Vincent sitting beside my bed.

Now, _that _made me start. Talk about déjà vu.

He was in one of those uncomfortable little armchairs, and, surprisingly  
enough, had taken to his old wardrobe of God-Can't-You-Tell-I'm-  
_Depressed-_Black. Now, let it not be said that Vincent doesn't  
look hot in black, but I think it washes him out a little. Put him in  
one of those vivid blue cotton robes and white pants that he used to  
wear in Wutai, and yeah, yummy.

...Aw, c'mon. My body may be dead but my _rrowr_ radar ain't. Let  
me have my eyecandy.

He had a gun in his hands. Death Penalty. It was gleaming like new  
silver and smelt just faintly of gunpowder; obviously he'd just reloaded  
it. There was his familiar gunbelt around his waist, and as he saw  
me wake, he expertly flipped it into his belt. I _love _seeing him with  
his guns. They become alive in his hands, and he spins them  
over his good fingers like they're another extension of himself, silver  
against the goldbrass of his prosthetic hand and beautiful and deadly.  
And liable to explode, just like him.

Instead of breakfast, this time, Vincent knew the score; immediately I  
was handed water and a veritable cocktail of pills which I swallowed  
hurriedly before the pain and the nausea started. He handed me some  
orange juice afterwards, too sour for my taste, but cool and liquid  
against my parched throat.

"...how do you feel?"

"Washed-up crap."

"Are you well enough today for me to carry you?"

"How would I get anywhere otherwise?" Make that not only lover, mother,  
and deity, but mobile transport unit. "'Course."

Vincent gave me a bowl of warm water as I struggled out of my clothes,  
and soap and a sponge, and sat me on another chair to wash myself. He  
turned away out of love, but I knew that he was probably watching me  
anyway to make sure that he was there the moment something went  
wrong.

I began to dab the warm water on my joints, making little indrawn  
hissing noises as I tended to my swollen leg. The flight hadn't done it  
much good; it was redder than before. The marks of poison had spiralled  
themselves now completely up my thigh, to my hip, around my stomach,  
small and quiet and lethal. They were almost beautiful, really. If I  
lived through it with everything I was so going to get it as a tattoo.

"Why've you got your gun?"

"Found my ammunition," he shrugged. "It needed cleaning."

"...hey, Vinnie?"

He made a little noise in the back of his throat that meant he was  
listening.

"What's gonna happen when the poison gets into my brain?"

"You won't feel it." I felt sorry for him. Usually I only started my  
Morbid Death Questions at midday.

"Oh." I suddenly got a bad feeling about that, and I scrubbed my ribs  
aimlessly. "...Why?"

"When it reaches your spinal cord you won't be feeling much of anything  
any more."

I dropped the sponge in shock. His voice was almost coolly sardonic, as  
he came over to pick it up and give it back to me, eyes as mild as  
sunrise. "I'm gonna be paralysed?"

"Don't worry." Almost unconsciously he flipped my hair behind one ear  
to scrub there, down my neck. "I imagine you'll be comatose by  
then."

Looking back up at him in horror, I wondered why he was being so openly  
quietly _cruel. _I was going to let loose a long string of vile cursewords  
at him, but I stopped dead once I saw his eyes.

He was crying, red eyes liquid like blood, tears on the lashes as he  
saw me looking and realized, blinking them away furiously so that I  
didn't have to see. The palpable hurt in them was even worse than him  
crying; stunned to the core, I stared back down at my feet and realized  
that for a long time I hadn't been able to move the toes on my bad leg.

"When's that going to happen?" I whispered.

"Dr. Bannon thinks a month or so." He should have been an actor, should  
Vincent. If he was crying his voice was still butter-smooth, unemotional.

"Will I be awake?"

"Yes."

I turned around and opened out my arms to him. I'd stopped caring a  
long time ago whether I was naked or not. Vincent had too, obviously,  
as he accepted me without question, drawing me into an awkward soapy  
embrace. My arms locked around his shoulders, stroking my hands through  
his hair, face at his neck as my body shook. There was a tremor  
underneath his skin where my cheek lay, pale creamy skin and his only  
means of screaming. Maybe ageless, Vincent Valentine, but everything  
still works inside you. Including your heart.

"I don't want to die, Vinnie," I whispered and I meant it.

His good hand found my right, curling into it protectively. He could  
have shattered the bones if he'd wanted to, pressing his strong slim  
fingers down and crushing mine into dust. "You won't."

I could have believed him, then. His warmth and his protectiveness and  
this emotional side of him that he only showed me, how alike we were  
inside, flesh and blood and human despite the fact that he was an  
ancient trained Turk and I was a young barely-out-of-my-teens ninja.  
My dearest, dearest, stupid-ass speaks-too-quiet friend.

But, colour me cynical, I didn't believe him this time around. Love him  
as I do I know that he's no God, and has no power over who lives and  
who dies. "I want you to kill me before it reaches my spine."

"..." His body stiffened.

"Take Death Penalty. Boom. I know you can make it painless..."

"Yuffie, damn you." His voice was so tired, no anger in it. I  
began to realize how old he really was. "Ask me anything but don't  
ask me to kill you."

"I'm sorry," I immediately said, contrite and bursting into tears right  
along with him, both of us rocking together in one despairing huddle.

There was a knock on the door, not breaking the spell but letting it  
down quietly, Vincent untangling himself from my arms to go and speak  
to the knockee. I dipped my sponge in the water and began to rinse  
myself clean, dabbing my face so that there could be no sign of tears,  
dampening my luckily-clean hair so that it didn't sit up in a big spiky  
mess on my head. Proud of myself, I managed to get the clean clothes  
Vincent had set out and wriggle my way into them, rocking back from the  
chair to the bed so that I could sit on it and wait.

Eventually, he closed the door and looked back at me. There were  
soapbubbles on his shoulders, making me giggle slightly as he reached  
up to brush them off.

"Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," I said grandly, lifting my arms up for him to securely  
pick me up once more.

"...let's go back to my house, then. I think there's something there  
you may want to see."

"Should I close my eyes?" I asked him when we were at the door to his  
little house, almost beside myself with excitement.

"If you want."

"You have no sense of _fun_," I complained, but closed my eyes anyway,  
to prolong the feeling for myself. "Tell me when I can open them."

I felt myself being carried, a door being opened, then another door and  
me being sat down on something soft and vaguely fuzzy. A couch. There  
were barely suppressed voices. "Vinnie? Can I open my eyes now?"

There was a grin in his voice. "I suppose."

I opened them, and was stunned into silence for at _least _.8 of a second  
before I managed to shriek, "_Tifa! Cloud!"_ in a voice that probably  
scared away all nesting birds from the village for twenty years.

There was an immediate babble of movement. I felt myself being pulled  
into arms, patted on the back, sprinkled with kisses - Tifa - having my  
back rubbed - Cloud - in an immediate confusing bright noisy babble  
where I couldn't understand a word being said out of the rushing  
hellos.

" - Oh, _Yuffie - _"

" - been treating you well? - "

" - so glad to see - "

The simple nostalgia of being with those two again was overpowering;  
I would have wept had I not been laughing so hard. Tifa smelt like  
perfume and like woodsmoke and like herself and there was Cloud,  
bright-haired and wide-eyed, eyes like a sea on fire, two pairs of  
calloused hands on mine and two equally amazing slow smiles. However, a  
look of chagrin came over Tifa's pretty face, placing me carefully back  
on the sofa from where they'd both been choking me with hugs and  
rounding on Cloud immediately. "Be _gentle_!"

"You were the one thumping her back, Tif," he said mildly, scratching  
his neck. "Oh, and hey again, Vincent," he added as an afterthought.

"Ohmigodohmigodohmigod," was all I had managed to say from that point,  
stunned, looking at both of them grinning like idiots and staring back  
at Vincent. "How - "

"I told them you were going to be in the area," he said softly.

"Haven't seen you in _years_, Yuff," Tifa said. "God, you look - "

"Shitty?" I suggested.

There was a brief silence.

"We didn't know how sick you were," she said awkwardly. "How come you  
never wrote?"

"I didn't think to," I said honestly. "And I'm not _that_ sick, Lockheart."

"Nuh-uh," Cloud said easily, bluegreen mako eyes fixed on my leg.  
"'Course not."

I glared at him. "I'll be fine, okay? I just look all icky."

"They know what's wrong, Yuffie." Vincent's velvet-soft voice floated  
out from the kitchen, where he'd disappeared to.

"Oh." I looked up at them. "Is this some sort of Last-Chance visit or  
something, then?"

Both winced a little at that.

"Going to die, huh?" Cloud said kindly, as if he was just talking about  
the weather.

"Looks that way, Strife m'boy."

"You realize I'll be very pissed off if you do."

"You can take it up with me in the Lifestream."

"You bet your scrawny little ass I will."

"Have you been taking lessons from Cid or something?"

"Can we not talk about it?" Tifa said, slightly desperate, one of her  
hands slipping into mine. "I want to catch up with Yuffie, Cloud."

A Look passed between them. So many words unsaid; I could practically  
feel them mentally locking horns about the subject. They obviously had  
the same problem Vinnie and I had - the innate ability to speak without  
words. Eventually, however, Cloud backed away and sat down on the seat  
opposite.

Funny, really. I never expected Vincent's little house to have  
something so ordinary as _seats. _It was furnished just like any  
of the other Gongagan houses in the area tiny and warm with hangings  
on the walls, though a little more austere.

"I like your hair," Tifa said by way of conversation, tugging gently on  
one of the dark locks hanging down on my shoulders.

I made a face. "I should ask Vincent to cut it. It's getting way too shaggy."

"Have you and Vincent really been living together?" That was Cloud.  
"Been driving him up the wall, I imagine?"

"For better or for worse!" Grinning at him, I folded my hands in my  
lap. "And no, he's been driving me crazy. I can never get him to shut up.  
All day long, all he does is talk, talk, talk. I say we should've left  
him in that coffin and bolted him down."

Vincent made a rude noise from the kitchen.

"You two've certainly _changed,_" the brunette martial artist laughed.

"Really?" I asked immediately, charmed. "How so?"

"You seem older."

"Don't look it, though," Cloud noted. "You look about twelve."

"Thanks ever so, you ass."

"Can I see..." His eyes rested on my leg.

"It's done up in bandages." I reached down, wincing slightly, to draw  
the cotton covering up off my leg, showing the linen-swathed swollen  
limb to him. "You won't be able to see anything unless I take 'em  
off - "

Vincent gave me a Glare as he came into the room to hand Cloud and Tifa  
steaming cups of coffee; I withered immediately and he handed me a cup  
of my own foul poisonous-smelling herbal tea. "...which I won't."

"It must hurt so much." Tifa's hand squeezed mine and my heart  
fluttered; I'd forgotten how lovely she was, how comforting,  
wine-coloured eyes soft as she looked me over. "You're incredibly  
brave."

"Nah," I whispered, so that my constant companion couldn't hear;  
"Vincent's been doing all the 'brave' business for me."

We talked, then. Vincent didn't; he stayed in the corners of the room,  
then moved off to others, presumably to look over things; I almost  
didn't notice, wrapped up completely in the easy chatter of Tifa and  
Cloud. They'd come over by chocobo from Junon, which was apparently  
now a bustling center of warmth and tourism and happiness instead of a  
pollution-clouded rat's nest, where Tifa ran an inn-cum-bar and both  
helped out clearing off monsters and odd jobs and helping Reeve,  
and both were very happy. In their late twenties by now, Tifa was still  
one of the most beautiful women I've ever met in my life apart from  
Aeris Gainsborough, hair down to her hips and in a tight braid from the  
nape of her neck; the only lines on her face were around her mouth from  
smiling too much. Cloud still had all the youthful exuberance he'd had  
at twenty-one, as blonde people tend to do, looking younger than the  
rest of us; his hair was unashamedly an air hazard of long spikes,  
though he was beginning to grow it longer at the back. He was still a  
warrior in every aspect of the word, right down to the way he sat. I  
told them stories about what it was like living with Vincent, leaving  
out the blood and the pain and the vomit, and managed to have Tifa in  
veritable fits.

I caught them looking at me, wide-eyed and confused at times, as if I  
was a mental patient and had said something I shouldn't have. Had I  
changed so much? Or had they? Was it because I was no longer cute and  
bouncy? I still had my exuberant cheerfulness, I knew that much.  
However, it was tainted by the hollows in my cheeks and the racking  
cough that came whenever I laughed, which was often, and the exhaustion  
that pinned me back against the cushions of the couch. I was many  
things still, but I was no longer a child. Illness aged me, physically  
and most likely mentally.

Funny thing, that. I still _felt _sixteen.

Vincent came back in, eventually, saw my feverish cheeks from happiness  
and frowned. Spoilsport. "I think Yuffie should get some rest now."

"Yes, Nursey," I sighed. Tifa raised an eyebrow, that I'd caved in so  
quickly.

"Cloud and I should probably head back," she said softly. "To make it  
back before nightfall, at least. It's been _so _wonderful to see you, though,  
Yuffie."

"I'm sure it was boring as hell to talk to me, Tiffster. Thank _you  
_for taking the time to pat me on the head."

"We missed you, Yuffie." That was Cloud, surprisingly enough, eyes  
serious.

"Are you trying to flirt with me?"

He reached over and noogied me very gently. "Get healthy, Yuffie.  
That's an order."

"Yessir." I held my arms out to be hugged by Tifa again, warm and soft,  
then felt myself lifted into the familiar warmth of Vincent. "You  
guys'll write, won't you? And PHS?"

"Promise," they chimed together, and Tifa drew back to kiss my cheek.  
"Keep yourself safe, Yuffie. Though it looks like Vincent's doing a  
good job of that already."

Vincent looked gratified.

He let me wave to them from the doorway as they disappeared out over  
the town, to the edge of it where their chocobos were tethered, before  
he moved me back inside. "How on earth did you make them come?" I  
demanded.

A smooth ebony eyebrow was raised. "When they heard about you, they  
_wanted_ to come. Tifa wrote me quite a while back; however, you were  
going through a bad patch and I doubted you'd want to see anybody  
during it." We moved off down a little passage, to his bedroom, a  
simple thing with a bed and a closet and not much else except a mostly  
empty gun rack. The bed was downy and made me sneeze as he laid  
me down in it. "I figured you'd want to see them."

"They were nice," I said drowsily. "I'm glad I got to see them."

"Thinking it might be your last?"

There was an awkward silence between us. I suddenly didn't want to  
sleep any more.

"I don't want a nap," I said sullenly. "Can I have my medicine and a  
book, Vinnie?"

"A book?" That threw him slightly. "I don't have many books you'd be  
interested in, Yuffie."

"Just get me one on materia or weapons or something. You know, with  
pictures I can drool over." I propped myself back on the pillows.  
What are you going to do here? Where are you going to sleep? Am I  
sleeping here? If I sleep now I'm _so _going to be awake all night."

Vincent ticked off my questions on his long slim fingers, as he was  
wont to do. "All right; I need to look over some things and tie up  
loose ends; on the couch; yes; I realize." He opened his closet and  
begun searching through it. "I need to pick up some things, as well.  
And send letters."

"Busy as a bee, we are." He wrapped another blanket around me. "Not so  
many, Vinnie, I promise not to get a fever and die. What about my  
medicine?

"I put it in your tea. Do you need painkillers?"

I nodded enthusiastically.

Vincent sighed. "I wish you'd go easier on them."

"When you feel like I do, Vinnie m'boy, you wanna pop those things down  
like candy."

He left, then reappeared with a handful of pills, a glass of water, and  
a number of fat tomes with titles like _Materia - From Raw To Refinery  
_and _Summoning. _Both looked about a gazillion years old and were  
probably horribly outdated, but upon opening one, they _did _have  
pretty sparkling pictures.

Vincent watched as I swallowed the pills, then, surprisingly, moved  
down to brush a kiss against my forehead. His lips were soft and  
slightly cool, but not unpleasantly so; I looked up at him, cheeks pink  
from pleasure and embarrassment. "It's been a long day," he murmured,  
seemingly just as embarrassed as me, but with a better hold on it.  
"Don't strain yourself, Yuffie."

I placed the glass down on the table at the beside, feeling suddenly  
tiny among the fluffy pillows and blankets, little and weak. "Thanks,  
Vinnie," I muttered thickly.

He'd already gone. I opened up _Summoning _to the third page, but then  
immediately fell asleep with it in my lap. I dreamt strange things.

* * *

When I woke up, I couldn't see. I momentarily panicked, but then I  
realized that it was very late at night and that this was a normal  
thing; my hand groped out for the lamp at the bedside table and  
eventually, with much cursing, my swollen fingers found the switch for  
the flickery lightbulb.

It illuminated a very sleepy-eyed Vincent, in a chair he'd drawn up  
next to my bed, obviously startled at being awoken in such a manner and  
immediately trying to look as if being there was normal.

"Why aren't you on the couch, you idiot?" I asked blearily.

Vincent shifted uncomfortably.

I decided to put him out of his misery and gave him a Look, one of his  
which I'd been practicing in the mirror . "Gods' sake, Vincent  
Valentine, don't just sit there and gawp at me. I can't bear to see you  
sleep in a damn chair. Lie down on the bed or something."

He looked suspiciously at me, but obediently lay down on my other  
side; he refused to get under the blankets but did undo the buttons of  
his shirt to show willing. I reached across to turn off the lamp.

We lay there in silence and the dark. I could still feel the weight of  
the book under my hands.

"...how do you feel?"

"Gawd, why does everyone ask me that? I would've thought it was  
obvious." I'm grumpy when I wake up. So sue me.

There was more silence. I felt guilty. I never meant to alienate  
Vincent. However, he knew my moods now as well as he knew his guns.

"Are you still swollen?"

"...Yeah."

He took one of my hands. It took a while for my fingers to bend and  
curve over his arthritically. "I'll get you some cream to help with  
that."

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"I won't be able to feel my hands in two months anyway."

"Three months," Vincent said instantly, and I could feel him tense in  
the dark.

"Have you been talking with Bannon?"

"...He wants me to take you in tomorrow."

I rolled away, taking my hand away from his, back facing him. "...Don't  
want to."

"Yuffie - "

"There's nothing anybody can do to help me any more, is there? Even if  
I got my stupid leg hacked off, doesn't matter, the poison's already in  
my system and you can't get it out. Is that why you stay, Vincent,  
'cause you know I'm gonna die?"

Sharply, he grabbed my shoulder, tugging me back over roughly to look  
at him. I could see his eyes, glowing slightly in the dark. A slight  
shiver ran through me; he saw it, and his grip loosened, but the  
intensity in his eyes did not.

"Is that why you think I stay, Yuffie?"

I didn't answer him for the longest time. "...You should've let me die  
in the forest, Valentine."

"...I will _never _let you die without a fight."

All my grumpiness and misery melted away as I wriggled towards him  
clumsily, burying my face in his neck, so grateful for the second time  
that I could have burst. "Oh, _Vincent," _I wailed.

"It'll be all right." He petted my back awkwardly. Oh, how many fathers  
and mothers had done that before to their children, without hope,  
knowing all they could do was protect until their last?

"Are you sure?" Tiny. Childish.

"Of course." A soothing parent, wiping away the pain. _All gone, Yuffie,  
for ever_. "Trust me. Just sleep."

I had hiccuped and cried my last, no tears left in me, no sorrow but to  
bury my face in his dandelion-sap gunpowder-smelling chest, dusty and  
sweet like bird feathers. "Night night," I whispered, as I had always  
done with my father; "Love you, Vin' - "

"Goodnight, Yuffie." He could have been Godo, much younger; the same  
softly-dignified voice, beautiful and smooth - but I would always be  
aware, painfully, wonderfully, that it was Vincent. As I spiralled down  
into unconsciousness, I felt him stroke my hair, tongue slipping over  
the words that I doubt he had spoken in decades; "love you."

Parent to child, perhaps, but it was the _everything._

* * *

When I awoke, he was gone; that was usual. There was a note,  
beautifully penned, on the pillow saying that he would come in the  
afternoon to get me for Bannon (ugh), and that I should probably get  
my rest in the meantime. Picking up my discarded copy of _Summoning  
_from the foot of the bed, I began to flick through it.

_Shiva - Ramuh - Knights of the Round - Phoenix -___

_Summons, Unverified - Appendix___

My finger stopped and I read down the text.

_Aesculapius (Asklepios)_

Status: Unverified

Raw summon (uncaptured), mythical relic of the nomads who used to  
inhabit the caves on the Icicle Mountains. Further information was lost  
when the nomad population died in the Tundra Fever era. Sighted by  
those lost in the area; appears most frequently as a snake or a robed  
man. Deals with healing, rheumatism, lameness, cripples, infection, and  
poison. Although unverified, summon believed nonexistent or perhaps an  
earlier sighting of Ashura. P60, 61, 89.

My finger ran over it again. _Deals with healing... cripples, infection,  
and poison. _Something wild caught up in my throat, and I recognized it as, finally,  
hope.


	6. The Third Month

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

_the third month  
_

We'd gone to see Dr. Bannon before we'd left. He kept on ending his  
sentences very quickly, trying to be polite and not obviously filling  
in the blanks. It was all right; I could do it for him.

"I'll give you these pills now, and these, uh, tranquilizers, for the  
next month." _Because after that, babe, you're so screwed. _"You may  
find it difficult to walk after a while because of your spine..." _...when  
it melts down and begins to stick out your back! _"I've set a list of  
exercises that Mr. Valentine can help you with." _I eat kittens for fun.  
_"You're in good shape." _For a terminally ill poison patient, sweetcheeks.  
_"I'm sure that you can have a peaceful, uh…"

Silence hung in the air and I suddenly felt terribly sorry for him. He  
must have been a pretty new doctor, not used to the frustration that  
was a disease you couldn't cure. And for a point in his favour, he  
hadn't given me the big I-Told-You-So. Stuttering and stammering over  
the words, it was obvious he hated this part of being a doctor.

Didn't mean I liked the bastard any better.

"I don't like taking tranquilizers," I muttered, only half-broken.

"Isn't there anything else...?" Vincent, voicing the query I had been  
about to demand. He knew himself that there was nothing else.

"Herbal medication isn't strong enough," Bannon said bluntly, and I  
relished the fact that he wasn't stopping and starting like a faulty  
motor, "though I have had faith in Asako Guirasame up to this point.  
You may even want to invest in some mahoucine cetrinide."

My brain didn't follow, but Vincent's immediately did. "You want to  
give her _calenture?"_ he questioned softly, naming a high-class drug.  
"Cloudland?"

"It's used for medicinal purposes, and – "

"And you are _sooooo _not giving me that shit, man. I'll take the  
goddamn tranqs."

"Good," he said bleakly. "Mr. Valentine, if you'd come over to my  
pharmocopoeia?"

Vincent stood up and walked through the door indicated, but Dr.  
Bannon stopped a moment and looked at me.

"Miss Kisaragi?"

"Yo?" I looked up at him, from where I was gnawing at the inside  
of one cheek.

"I'm – "

Fuck. He was trying to say _sorry. _I cleared my throat. "We won't  
be seeing each other again."

He looked as if he was going to say something further; then he  
ducked his head in new resolve and followed Vincent.

We left for Wutai almost immediately afterwards.

* * *

Autumn is the end of all that, more dreary than winter, when the  
plantlife goes senile and the animals start hoarding and preparing for  
a long boring winter. The sogginess underfoot is that of mulched-up  
red-brown leaves and you can smell the stink of sweet plant  
putrefaction. When I was younger I used to go and roll in the leaves  
and wear the thick woollen sweaters my aunts would knit for me, renting  
them past all recognition on the grasping sharp edges of tree-branches.

I think Vincent might be an autumn boy. He wears his yukata again and  
melts gently into the landscape in it's rough material, hair braided in a  
painstakingly uneven plait that my arthritic fingers took years to meld  
together. Sometimes he has to turn around and look at me because he  
feels my breath quicken as I work the strands; there's no danger. I  
love his hair, soft and beautiful and agonizingly flawless – it reminds me  
in a really creepy incestual-I'm-sure-way of my mother's. I want to  
bury my face in it and breathe him in, the clean sweet smell mixed with  
dust from the mountain. In the shadow of the trees he looks so Wutaian  
that I expect him to pull a wakizashi out of nowhere any minute now and  
fence in the twilight. He is the death of the year. He walks perpetually  
in death. He is life twining away; not the sterile softness of winter ever,  
but caught in the breathless preparation to let go that characterizes  
fall.

All this death gives me the strange need to be near him. The hunger  
to press my ear to his chest to hear his heartbeat overwhelms me  
sometimes. I was never so frightened as when I looked at him, wondering  
how slow and steady it was, when he grasped my chin and leaned forward  
so I could place my ear above where it pulsed.

It was slow. Oddly slow. I looked up at him, raising an eyebrow, frowning at  
the laboured beat of it.

"Modified heart," he said briefly.

"Ewww," I said gleefully, happily ruining the moment. "That's _grossness,  
_Vincent. Why does it beat slower?"

"It's stronger in getting blood to the rest of my body. It needs fewer  
pumps." He reached out two fingers to my neck, testing my own pulse.  
"Yours is quicker, but still below average. It's a good thing."

"Do you have any other weird-ass organs?"

"… Brain enhancements."

"Ewwww."

"… Eye enhancements…"

"Ewwwww."

"Increased efficiency when using materia due to gland augmentation;  
a more useful respiratory system; an ear on the back of my neck and two  
spleens."

"… okay, now you're just pissing with me."

He kept his face perfectly straight. "And three stomachs."

"You can shut up now."

"And five throats."

"All your throats can shut up as well."

"I exude a slippery substance when frightened."

"You know, that's just disgusting."

"I have an egg sac on my thigh."

"Vincent, I'll throw up on you."

"And a trick foot."

"_Vincent!"_

I think I might be a bad influence. I think I might adore him.

* * *

_… remains of sacrifices were found upon the altar; however, it is not  
confirmed as to whether rituals and possible summoning of Aesculapius  
took place within the temple proper or within another setting. Many  
religious documents, which would have helped, were set on fire as part  
of the purification process after the fever, unknowingly…_

I read until my eyes hurt and remembered why I slept during school.

__

…fragments of materia recovered at point…

…coagulation point northwest of the…

…however, none recovered…

The results of my research weren't exactly _good. _Ten bazillion people'd  
gone looking for Aesculapius before I made _my _plans. And they'd found  
crap-all. Yet there was a little voice in the back of my head whispering,  
'Go for it, Yuffie. Go.'

__

… yielded a high quantity of 'Heal' and 'Restore' materia. This was not  
a sufficient amount to justify the area being a once-hallowed point of  
worship for the Healing summon, which lead some to argue that there  
was an area that had been passed over, but in all likelihood Aesculapius  
was merely a primitive religious figure than a powerful Summon...

I should never trust the voices in the back of my head. They're the ones  
who tell me to steal stuff. I'm sure I have demon possession, rather than  
a conscience.

__

… with the death of the Jasonic tribe closest to the midpoint, all possible  
leads have been lost, with only scattered ancestors to give any clues as  
to the truth behind the stories…

I planned to leave in mid-Autumn. Anything after that, and it'd be too late.

* * *

Turned out I was too late anyway.

We kept inside that autumn. We let the windows open, to let the breeze  
through of the fading summer flowers, but other than him sitting me in  
the sunshine I didn't go outside. Vincent had a complete _thing _about me  
getting enough sunlight; it contained Vitamin Annoyance or something.  
I felt like a potted plant; I'm surprised he didn't water me.

I used to sit for long hours and hike my shirt up and wriggle my cotton  
slacks off and stare at my body. The curving marks of poison that  
twined up me like ivy on oak; they'd followed the veins up from my  
thigh and my stomach and were creeping across my ribcage to my heart.  
Slow death. There was one little vine that slowly inched it's way up  
towards my armpit; I used to look at them and shudder until Vincent  
pulled a sheet across me and gave me Asako's vile-tasting tea and watch  
me weakly not-protest. I found out that it was fever-prevention, blocking.  
I never really knew what fevers were for, before. My body was heating  
up continuously to try and destroy the infection, which lived at my body  
temperature and would hopefully die if exposed to one higher. However,  
this was no ordinary infection and I would have burnt up like dry kindling  
if my body was allowed to take control.

I still bit down on Vincent's fingers every time Grandma cut my leg  
open. Still a wuss.

My sleeping patterns changed entirely and I have no idea when Vincent  
ever did the deed himself. Sometimes I'd sleep the night through;  
sometimes the day. Sometimes I'd sleep from five o'clock to three in  
the morning. I always used to wake up to him leaning over me, stiff from  
sleep and stiff from sickness, and let out a little contented kitten-purr as  
he massaged all the stiffness out of me. My fingers would curl open and  
my back would bend and my good leg stretch out. He never touched the  
bad leg, not much; it hurt like a bitch. The only time he tried, I wept like  
a little girl.

I woke up at three in the morning again, in the soft darkness, sky black-blue  
and dotted with stars. I could see it from my window. There was a moon, too,  
the barest sliver of a crescent. Or was it a gibbous? I forget; Vincent once  
sat up with me and told me everything there is to know about waxing-waning  
moons, but all I could remember is giggling like a maniac for hours over the  
word 'gibbous'.

Hee, hee. Monkeys.

"Good morning, Yuffie." His voice is the purest lambent velvet. "How do you  
feel?"

"Back, Vinnie." I closed my eyes, taking mental stock of my body. "Back hurts."  
It didn't hurt so much as I couldn't really feel it. I couldn't feel my hips,  
either. I felt like a block of black marble. I attempted to wiggle my toes;  
they worked, albeit feebly.

He rolled me over, taking off my sweat-stained cotton shirt to work his magic  
on my back. Long fingers worked the knots out of my neck, prompting a long soft  
sigh of relief, and then he took his hands away.

"Don't stop," I muttered sleepily.

"… Yuffie, I haven't."

I paused.

"I have my hands on your lower back."

"I can't feel them. I must be numb this morning. I'll probably get a case of  
screaming pins and needles in a moment."

He worked at me for a while. I could feel his hands moving my body from that  
spot, but otherwise, it felt like nothing.

"Is that better?" he asked after a while.

"No."

Lying there in almost complete darkness with his hands on me that I couldn't  
even feel, I began to get frightened.

"… Did you feel that?"

"I didn't feel anything."

"I just pinched you." His hand made it's way down my leg, where there was still  
slight feeling. "Can you – "

"I can feel my leg, but – "

"Did you hurt your back and – "

"I would have told you, Vinnie – "

"I want you to try and sit up."

He rolled me onto my back again. My brain commanded my back to bend and for all  
the little magic of my nervous system to burst into lightning sparks again, to  
sit up. I gasped as I tried, like a fish, wriggling, arching my neck and  
kicking out my leg as I tried to drag myself forward. It felt like there was an  
invisible weight on my hips and back; the lower bits wouldn't respond and they  
were fucking up the rest of my spine. I couldn't sit up.

"Vincent," I panted, "Vinnie, I – I can't – I – "

"Come on, Yuffie." Such gentle encouragement, and something razor-sharp and  
screaming beneath it. "You can do it."

"I _can't_," I wept. "Ican'tcan'tcan'tcan'tIcan'tsitupohGodsohI'mgonnadieI'mgonna – "

Sharp and efficent, he slapped me. Not just slapped me lightly, but slapped me  
hard enough to make me see stars and for my head to be knocked back. Without  
preamble, he shoved me over onto my front again, fumbling with his good hand,  
and did something to my spine that I was glad I couldn't feel. I just started  
weeping in quiet misery, then felt all the air shoved out of my lungs as he  
slammed his fist down in the area of my kidneys. My weeping slowed to little  
baby hiccups of surprised pain. I honestly believed he hated me in that moment.  
Hated me for being sick and hated me for not getting well and hated me for  
dying, hated me for everything, just hated. Then he slowly rolled me over  
again – dizziness – and sat me up himself, face drawn in a death mask of pain.  
His eyes bled crimson. This was a death knoll for us. My back has given up; my  
nerves have given up; how long before the rest of it does? Death begins in  
tiers; I was slipping lower and lower and lower -

"I'm going to go get Asako." The velvet voice has turned canvas, scratchy and rough.

"No," I immediately moan. "No, Vinnie, please. Stay here. Don't leave me. Not  
yet."

He bundles me up into his arms and swings his long legs over the side of the  
bed. It's still dark with no sign of sunrise, no stain of grey in the east. He  
props me up and holds the cup to my mouth as I drink the cooling tea he'd  
prepared for me, sip by sip. I'm crying as I drink, chest convulsing, and he  
wipes up the little drips that escape from my mouth with his forefinger.

I would never walk. I would never run. I would never go looking for Aesculapius  
and I was _dead _already.

"I thought this wouldn't happen," I burble, all herbal tannin and saliva and  
tears and sweat, "for months!"

"...it's not all your back. I can't guess at exactly what's affected, I'm no  
expert on the spine, but – "

"But I can't walk, I can't sit up, I can't – I can't do _anything_, Vincent!  
I'm a – a – a goddamn mongol! A retard! A cripple!"

"No, you're still Yuffie," he said, very wearily.

For some reason, that calmed me a little, or at least tickled my fancy enough  
to make me giggle through my tea and snort it over my cheeks. I accepted the  
next little bitter sip he offered, choking it down. He was taking the pillbox  
from the table next to my little makeshift bed with unconscious ease, crushing  
up the medicine and dropping it into my tea with his claw. Surprising, the  
amount of dexterity he could wield from that goddamn thing. I accepted the tea  
mutely again, tasting the pills beneath, making a face.

"Breathe," he instructed me gently, still seeing me choke, my hyperventilation  
coming through. It was so claustrophobic, there in the darkness in the warmth  
of his arms. "In. Out. In. Out."

I gulped for air, part of me amazed at myself. Old Yuffie never let anybody  
tell her how to do things; here was Vincent telling me how to breathe, and me  
accepting it as gratefully as if he was the reason air was pouring into my  
lungs. Eventually the barrier melted and I gasped freely again.

The tea was all gone, lumpy herbs at the bottom. I swivelled them around  
miserably. Vincent took the cup off me and set it on the sideboard.

"_Now_ we go to Asa," he said, in a voice that would not be denied. My back  
was marble as he lifted me up in his arms. I could see in the light now, from  
the stars, that he was still just wearing drawstring pants and nothing on top,  
hair in a messy topknot. He was beautiful enough to break my heart as he opened  
the door and let the cold night air rush in, not bothering about a shirt or  
about pants for me as he stepped out into the night and walked down the ancient  
stone steps leading down from my house to get to Asako's.

I remember thinking that the moon was indeed gibbous.

* * *

Grandma, who was not God, could do fuck-all for me but we'd known that from the  
outset. We constructed a brace for my back so I could be shoved in sitting  
position without flopping over in a rubbery heap; Vincent carried me everywhere  
usually anyway so that didn't change much, but I now had to be propped up almost  
constantly and I had very little private time any more. Vincent woke me up many  
times when I was sleeping to turn me over; eventually I learnt how to ignore  
him and sleep through it.

I bitched about it unendingly. It seemed to make people feel better.

Dad's hair was grey. Vincent took me to sit with him, as was our custom, at  
noon if I wasn't sleeping and we'd sit and watch his fish and his ponds and  
talk with our silence. His hair wasn't white and ivory vanilla-scoop pure like  
Asako's – it was grey like the smouldering ashes of wood. I hadn't known Godo  
was getting old so quickly; I had this horrible feeling I knew the cause.

We sat on the bench. I had a chair that I could be strapped into, but the utter  
humiliation of that meant that I ditched it almost every time in order to sprawl  
over by myself. Dad and I had had a minor argument that was very refreshing  
over whether I should sit in the chair or not, but eventually I ended up with  
my head against his thigh breathing in his dandelion-sap smell and lying on the  
bench watching the sky and his nose.

"Your nosehair's getting grey, old man," I commented.

"So is everything else."

"You should pluck it."

"Keeps my nostrils warm for winter."

"You're a disgusting, senile old man."

"You're a worthless ingrate of a daughter."

There was another long moment of silence. A thick grey-wool cloud scudded  
overhead. The sky was the colour of arctic ice. Vincent was somewhere else in  
the garden, most likely thankful for a breather from me. If I craned my neck I  
thought I could see the arm of his yukata.

"Yuffie," Godo suddenly said, gentle and very quiet. "We need to talk."

"Shoot."

"As you know, I signed over the rulership of Wutai to you before you left. I've  
been acting as regent in your absence."

"Actually, no, I didn't." I hadn't even thought about it. Lady Kisaragi. They  
called me that anyway.

"Do you never pay attention?" he scolded. "Yuffie, this is very important, so  
please open your fool ears and _listen _for once."

I opened up my fool ears and listened.

His hand came down to stroke my hair. The affection of the action immediately  
set me on edge. "Yuffie, every leader of Wutai must pick a heir if they have no  
sons or daughters of their own before they die."

"If I die, won't you become leader again?"

"In a way. That could happen. But that is the _bad _way. You cannot pick me  
legitimately as heir – if you did, it might be seen as my grasp for power anew,  
and someone else might make a bid for lordship of Wutai and claim you didn't  
have full grasp of your wits. The people want a young heir. It would be better  
if you chose somebody now – one of your cousins, maybe – someone young."

"Shake?" I suggest. "Chekov?"

"They're retainers, Yuffie. _Young. _I was thinking Arin, or perhaps Kaede – "

"Dad!" I immediately explode. "Arin doesn't want to be ruler of Wutai!" He was  
my shy cousin, currently someone working in the Turtle's Paradise bar in order  
to earn enough money to go to Junon. We didn't talk often, but when we did  
talk, I got an anti-impression of leadership-wantingness. "He'd hate the job.  
And Kaede's a ditz. She'd let _anyone _marry her to seize power."

"I know," he said ruefully. "But there _must _be a heir. Why did you think I  
wanted you to have babies so badly?"

"Because you were a dirty old sadist!"

"Your younger relative are much too young," he said softly. "And what with your  
life expectancy, may I put this bluntly, won't be ready by the time you leave  
this vale of tears." His voice had hardened. I think he was trying not to cry.  
"You could just pick Arin as an intermediate, someone who can hand power over  
when the time comes, perhaps – "

"So this is how the Kisaragi dynasty ends? A slew of caretakers?"

"_Yes_," he snapped suddenly. "It ends with the death of their Lady  
before her time because she was damn fool enough to wander around the world for  
Gods-know-how-long and ignore her duties and get herself bitten by a poisonous  
monster and have all the grace to die when her father has barely any years  
left in _himself_. All that we have worked for – all that we have gained – might  
collapse if you leave us without a leader!"

The garden was silent.

"The people want someone upstanding," I murmured.

"Yes."

"Someone strong."

"Yes." His voice was wistful.

"Someone who won't abuse power."

"Yes. Yuffie, what are you – "

"Someone who I approve of."

Suspicion darkened in his eyes. "Yuffie – "

"Someone who, importantly, will last a bit. Yo, Vincent," I hollered, pushing  
myself back against my father's leg so that I could make a stab at sitting up.  
He moved to support me immediately. "Vinnie, get over here."

He stopped looking at the roses and walked over, all grace, eyes quizzical. My  
father was looking at me like I'd pulled open a time bomb.

"Yuffie?"

"Vinnie? How much Wutaian blood do you have?"

His brow furrowed as he thought that over, lips curving in a sardonic small  
smile. "...I worked in a takeaway when I was thirteen."

"That'll do. Dad? I pick him."

"Yuffie, you are not picking him as your heir!"

"…Yuffie, you are not picking me as your heir."

They said this at the exact same time. Stooges.

"How did you hear me from all the way across the garden?" I accused Vincent  
suspiciously, then turned back to Godo. Maybe he really did have an ear in the  
back of his neck. "Look. Vincent's good at this. The people like him and he's  
an ex-member of AVALANCHE – the only man with more status is bloody Cloud  
Strife, but he couldn't run a village if you paid him, he can barely brush his  
own hair without losing the comb."

"If he's brushing his hair, why does he have a comb?"

"Well, he's _that _idiotic."

"Yuffie!" Vincent's voice was slightly panicked. "Yuffie, I have... I have no  
idea on how to run a village, a – a city! I don't _want _that sort of power.  
I want to be left alone," he finished plaintively.

"Tough. Vincent, if I don't have you, I don't have _anybody_. Do you want Wutai  
to die along with the rest of me? Are there going to be two deaths, instead of  
one?" I clenched my hands into fists, mouth twisting in a scowl that meant I  
was going to cry soon. "When I die, I know what's going to happen to you. You're  
going to nail yourself back in your coffin, or go out to Gongaga and live in a  
little house and never talk to anybody – and that's the _good_ ending scenario.  
Or you'll go back to the Waterfall and live there licking mould off the walls  
and bemoaning the rest of your life because not only did you let Lucrecia die  
but you let me die as well." He stepped back at that. That shot told! The  
immediate anger in his eyes was one I could hardly bear, but I pushed on.  
"Are you doing this just to hurt yourself, Vincent? Do you want to see  
me die? Do you want to beat yourself up over it for the next ten kazillion  
years? I'm not letting you use me for that. Not _ever!_

"So, and in my legally binding word as Lady Kisaragi, I proclaim you, Vincent  
Valentine, my heir and Lord in my place. I also adopt you as one of the Shinobi;  
your honour is our honour; your dishonour our dishonour." My voice fell into  
booming ritual cadence. My father was looking horrified, but it was too late to  
stop. Vincent looked like he'd swallowed a frog that was kicking all the way  
down. "_Your_ blood is _our_ blood. This family is _your _family. You _are _Kisaragi Vincent."

My wasted lungs ran out of puff by that point and I had to take a lungful of  
breath. Amen.

Godo and Vincent had silent apoplexies and died on the floor. Well, at least, I  
think that's what they _wished _had happened. That, or it suddenly happening  
to me. Vincent looked as if he dearly wanted to turn Chaos and strangle me.

Suddenly, my father spat into his palm. "I witness this," he said softly in  
lilting Wutaian, "and declare it binding."

I spat into my own. "I witness this," I repeated softly, "and declare it  
binding."

We both looked at Vincent. Very, very slowly, he spat into his hand, and we all  
grasped fingers. I wondered momentarily why we couldn't use something less  
disgusting for binding agreements, like vomit or arterial blood.

"I witness this," he rumbled, voice somewhere in his boots, "and – and declare  
it binding – and – Yuffie – "

His eyes met mine. They were full of anger and unwary resentment and something  
so tender and young and uncertain that I didn't care any more.

"If ever I live," I began, and I don't know why I said it that way, only I  
suddenly felt ancient and much older than he was – crap, I didn't even know  
what I was saying anyway, it was in my voice, not my words - "if ever I live, I  
do for you, Kisaragi Vincent – "

He wrapped his arms around me, spit and all. Godo stood up and left us tactfully  
to that private clinging moment, my head on Vincent's shoulder, and I don't  
know what he thought. Kisaragi Vincent. The name felt so good on my tongue. As  
if I'd finally swallowed him and made him a part of me, forevermore.

"I love you, you know," I said softly.

Vincent looked up at me. There was something so twenty-seven in his timeless  
eyes that my mouth split in a grin.

"Your love, Yuffie," he said, equally soft, "is a ferocious thing."

In the heartbeat of that moment I thought that he might kiss me. His hands were  
warm, propping up my useless back, body carefully placed against the throb of  
my leg. He suddenly wasn't Vincent, sixty-something ancient in a young man's  
body; he was the other half of me, alive and passionate and crystalline. No  
demons. No hurt.

Instead, he lifted me up into his arms, standing. "...and, frankly, it sucks."

"Vincent! Vincent! You said '_sucks'_!"

He propped his arms around me with a sigh. "… yes, Yuffie."

"You used an example of pop culture! Oh, Vincent!" I craned my head up. "Is  
Meteor coming? Because, you know, you just said 'sucks'."

"...yes, Yuffie."

" And you said it as a derogatory term, not as a verb, which might have been  
pardoned, as in, 'this vacuum sucks', but instead, you said 'it sucks', a  
popular term for describing something as negative!"

He rolled his eyes in 'why me?' despair, and we went inside to wash our hands.  
Well, for him to wash our hands.

"… you really said it!"

"… _yes, _Yuffie…"

* * *

Funny how things turn out.

And how short it is from grief to joy, smiles to tears, pain to youth. I saw my  
life as a rapidly shortening line, a date to end by, my entire body coated  
thick in the bright sheen of mortality. I had a legacy. I had Vincent in my  
stead when I died. I had him up until that moment when my heart gave off and I  
left for the big Materia Hut in the sky. He was part of my _family _now – that  
was just too, too cool. I had so much.

One jump from grief to joy. Hope to shattered disappointment. I had been so  
eager to just slip away as my last swan song and come back whole, radiant,  
healed, Aesculapius. God, why did I even think that _I _would succeed where  
billions of others hadn't, with time and resources and health on their hands? I  
was going to die.

I didn't want to die now. Not quietly. Not gracefully.

My father told me –

__

Nobody dies gracefully, Yuffie, or with dignity – it's all a lie. Your mother...  
in her last hours... refused any more medication and begged me to take her  
outside to let her die. With dignity.

She died spluttering and gasping and unable to move with her eyes begging me  
not to let her die, Yuffie. She died with no dignity. She simply died outside  
in the sunshine. There is no gracefulness in letting go – rarely – if ever –  
here will never be... Kisaragis die in battle. Not because it has dignity – but  
because is at least mercifully quick, and because nobody expects grace on a  
battlefield...

I'd read the Aesculapius (and Ashura) sections until I'd memorized them off by  
heart; then I ransacked my father's library for more. I used to lie in my bed  
in rainy nights, propped up by pillows, poring through them. There was so  
goddamned little about this Summon! Some books dismissed as rumour; others  
protested as fact. I looked through every book – every materia tome, every  
geography volume. Vinnie had never cottoned on to my researching my miracle, no  
matter how damn unsubtle I'd been – I'd clipped up all the reports, all the  
maps, all the articles and hid them underneath my mattress. I laughed  
hysterically afterwards, to think I could have done it all by myself as I'd  
used to do.

And now? I couldn't walk and was fading fast. Without the steady diet of  
medication – medication that I didn't really know how to pick and administer to  
myself – I could cark it in a week. I needed more than a week to look for  
Aesculapius. It was getting close to my fourth month of illness – longer than  
that, really – and it was only if I was _lucky _that I was supposed to live  
to a fifth and sixth. My life was a rug being pulled away from underneath my  
feet, and I'd already fallen with a bump on my ass. I moved into the same sort  
of depression I'd had when I'd first been in Wutai with my disease; no matter  
what Vincent did, all I used to do was sleep, and when I woke I was sullen and  
silent.

So, as one last bitter goodbye to my hopes, I decided to burn the entire  
printouts I'd gathered of the stupid mountains and the stupid summon and the  
stupid maps and kiss the ashes away. In my _own_ rank stupidity, I asked Vincent  
to hand me the Fire materia.

"Why do you hate the geography of the Icicle Mountains so much?" he asked me  
mildly, looking over the papers, the maps and the places I'd marked, the paths  
to take.

"Just hand me the damn materia," I'd groused. "I want to send this all to hell."

He fingered through the reports, one eyebrow raised. "Why?"

"...Promise you won't laugh at me?"

"I swear."

My shoulders slumped as I crossed my arms. "...I wanted to go looking for a  
summon, a poison-healing summon. Don't know why I thought it would work. Just  
one of those pipe-dream last-ditch attempts, I guess."

"Aesculapius." He'd barely listened to my rant, shuffling through the papers.  
"You… you wanted to go look for it?"

"Yeah."

"Shinra looked, you know. When I was a Turk…"

"M'sorry I got so excited over it, then."

He looked at my miserable, drawn little face, with the bones sticking out. "Is  
that why you've been so cheerful, Yuffie? Before your... back? You wanted to go  
find this summon?"

"I wanted to live."

He was silent for a long time over that.

"If even mighty Shinra found nothing," I shrugged, "I suppose I'm glad _I _didn't  
try. I probably would have just died up in the mountains. Better, though,  
really, to cark it among all that snow, you'd get made into a popsicle in  
moments, no rot or anything gross - "

There was another moment of silence as he went to my little kitchen, pouring  
himself a cup of tea and sipping at it, bloodied eyes a million miles away. He  
seemed to be thinking about something so hard his brain looked like it was  
steaming.

"Yuffie," he eventually said softly, "I never said Shinra never found anything."

My heart stopped.

"They found… they found traces, they…"

One of my arms reached out and snagged him forward bodily, eyes burning. Though  
my arm was weak, I tugged him forward as hard as I possibly could, practically  
falling out of the bed. "_Vincent Valentine, _you are _taking _me to that mountain  
whether you _like _it or _not."_

"Yuffie, your back…"

"You can carry me."

"…It's freezing."

"I'll pack a jacket."

"It's full of monsters."

"Give me a gun."

"Your father."

"So don't tell him."

"Half a dozen things could kill you in your condition…"

"Bring it on."

"…"

"Did you or did you not listen to the 'whether you like it or not' clause?"

"I know," he said heavily, long strands of ebony falling loose from the neat  
ponytail at the nape of his neck and grazing his cheeks. "I'm going to end up  
taking you, aren't I?"

"You bet, Vinnie baby." My cheeks were flushed, and I couldn't wipe the grin  
off my face. One step, from disappointment to hope again. "You'll really take  
me?"

"Of course, Yuffie." A wry smile spread across his features, one hand slipping  
to prop my useless back up comfortingly. "I don't break my promises."

"And which promise was that?"

"Mine to myself; to make sure you lived."

"Aw, Vin. I don't know what I'd do without you..." I wrapped my arms around his  
neck, cheek on his shoulder. "You just don't want me to die and force you to  
become Lord Vincent, you asshole," I added tenderly.

"Exactly."

I pecked him on the cheek, though for two pins I would have stuck my tongue  
down his throat and played tonsil hockey with him out of pure gratitude.  
However, that might have been pushing it. He looked like my avenging angel to  
me at that moment, crimson eyes composed. I couldn't believe he had acquiesced  
so easily on the issue, that he was taking me, taking the chance. I couldn't  
_not_ find Aesculapius after such a display of faith. "I'm going to live, Vincent.  
I swear! I'm going to live!"


	7. Chapter Three

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

_chapter three  
_

**A/N:** For Tochira, who made my inner Yuffie insist Vincent was throwing off her  
groove; for Demeter, who reminded me of something I'd completely forgo – uh, I  
mean, put off; and for all of my warm, encouraging, amazing reviewers, who can  
get a warning that it ain't over till it's over and that I'll get to thank you  
all eventually for your eternal enthusiastic kindness and divine patience.

* * *

I have always _loved_ sneaking out in the middle of the night.

There's nothing quite like it. There's that expectation as you lie awake  
beforehand and know, just know, that hey, you're about to _leave_ and everybody's  
going to have kittens in the morning. You wear all black. You tiptoe over  
floorboards which makes no sense as your father doesn't even live in the same  
house as you. You run over people's rooftops, just because you can…

… all when more would have been accomplished just by leaving the back way in  
your house and tramping out into the forest, which is what Vincent Valentine  
did.

"Look, it's the _style_ of the thing," I groused the night before, practically  
all in shivers with excitement and sick to my stomach with hope. "I mean, it's  
all right for you, you dress in black _anyway_, Mono-Valentine, but me, I'm  
leaving in… in… in _not the right clothes_. It's just not the style of the  
thing."

"The _style_ of the thing will be getting you into the forest; hope that we do  
not encounter something more vicious than me, Yuffie. Cid is landing on the  
other side so that Godo does not hear the Highwind and smell a rat; frankly, he  
will be smelling a rat the next morning and I doubt that he will _ever_ forgive  
me for doing this."

"Vincent, my honey, nothing's more vicious than you are – and look at it this  
way; if he never forgives you, you never have to rule Wutai."

"I never want to have to rule Wutai anyway," he said softly.

"C'mon, Vinnie." I sat up on my bed; it was late afternoon. I was watching  
Vincent pack, the autumn sunlight dappling his hair liquid pitch as he fussed  
over my winter clothing. We were drinking tea; I strained forward to put my  
empty cup on the bedside table. "It won't be that baaaarrrgh!"

Vincent caught me just in time from falling completely off my padded chair and  
I toppled him to the floor, landing in a painful squawking tumble as he ended  
up flat on his back with me on his chest. Nothing hurt that much – my bad leg  
hadn't taken a blow – so I exploded into giggles and ignored the fact I had  
just fallen off a chair because my body didn't work. He propped both of us up  
gently with a long-suffering sigh and held me in his lap as he folded a packet  
of pills into a vest.

I rested my head on his shoulder, leaning into him and feeling the muscles work  
underneath his skin as he moved. Hideously uncomfortable. I loved it. "What're  
we gonna do if I get well?" I asked for the millionth time. Some people ask  
what they do if they win the lottery; I ask about my health.

His cheek brushed my hair as he leant down slightly, careful not to shift me  
and thus my swollen disgusting limb as he tucked it into a knapsack. "Many  
things, I suppose, Yuffie."

"I'm gonna get some new clothes. Ones that show off my _legs_. You know, like  
miniskirts and short-shorts and, hell, why bother, I'm just gonna go naked for  
a week."

A blush stained his cheeks, which was a bit stupid as he'd seen me naked twenty  
thousand times. It wasn't exactly the most erotic sight unless one was a  
necrophile and into very fresh corpses. Then again, he _did_ used to sleep in a  
coffin… "I'm sure."

"What're you gonna do? We'd go out and celebrate, right?"

"Of course."

"How?"

He pondered over that for a while. "… I would take you hiking out to the  
waterfall that flows down from Li Xue," he started, naming the hilly scrubland  
a bit south from Wutai. "We could sit up top next to the rocks and watch the  
water fall."

"And we could eat icecream."

"… Yes, we could eat icecream."

"What kind of icecream?"

"Fudge ripple," he said promptly. God, the man has so many facets I could cut  
myself on him. He's an ex-Turk and has demon blood and a many-times-over  
murderer and a rejected lover and a paranoid self-flagellating sinner but he  
can still have the humanity to like fudge _ripple_.

I mean, you'd at least expect that much angst to prefer mint and chocolate chip.

"Would we eat it with spoons?"

He quirked his eyebrows at me, turning his head and absently running one thumb  
across the skeletal sticking-out bone of my cheek. Someone accidentally gave me  
a mirror a week ago and I broke it into pieces. My flesh is stretched so  
tightly over my body I'm like a kite on a frame. My soul is beginning to want  
to break away from the imperfect chains that bind it to earth. There's a  
dangerous bit in me that just wants to sleep. "How else do you eat icecream?"

"With your fingers. You scoop it out an' you eat it with your hands and you get  
all sticky and half your face gets covered and you spend the next half hour  
sucking it from your l-li-lips – " I explode into coughing again and turn my  
face away to do it on the pale blue cotton of my button-up shirt. It flecks  
red. Once again I have broken my throat; or maybe it's the blood from my  
stomach sores, I forget.

Vincent's fingers wipe the crimson from my lips, almost absently. We're so  
steeped in death it's no big thing any more. "What would we do after the  
icecream, Yuffie?" he urges on gently.

"We'd s-swim in the r-river." My coughing fits can go on for hours. "A-a-a-and  
dry on the r-rocks. And…"

He wipes my mouth, over and over. The racking convulsions subside. "And?"

"And we'd…" I pick my brain over the area. I haven't been there in years. "And  
go eat the blueberries from the bushes if they were ripe and eat them even if  
they weren't and sit there getting stomach cramps for _hours_ and probably barf  
in the bushes. At least, I would, you'd be there saying, '… You shouldn't have  
eaten those, Yuffie, I told you not to,' and rubbing me on the back."

Unconsciously, he _does_ begin to rub me on the back, then stops when he realizes  
what he's doing. I shift my back impatiently to make him do it again, and he  
does, albeit slower. "I promise not to let you eat the unripe blueberries."

"They won't be unripe. This is _my_ future-fantasy, all right? They'll be  
perfect. I'll have purple stains all over my mouth. They won't even have bugs.  
Then we'll strip down to our underwear – well, I will, and in my future-  
fantasy, I'll kick you with both legs until you do – and go swimming in the  
water and I'll try to catch the fishes and never make it. Then we'd hike back,  
right?"

"Right." His fingers rub over my upper back; my lower doesn't feel it. "And  
watch the sun set."

"Red and gold and purple and orange."

"Of course."

"Vinnie, if I get well – "

"_When_, Yuffie."

"Okay, okay, pedant – _when_ I get well, can I dress you up sexy and take you to  
a resturant in Junon?"

Crimson eyes are so _bemused_. He has amazingly long lashes. "You'd find that  
fun?"

"_Yeah!_ I'd do my Chocolate Mousse trick."

"… I hesitate to ask…"

"… It's when I dare you to a competition to see how many bowls of chocolate  
mousse you can eat, then I eat too many and I barf. _Everywhere_."

"… Yuffie, how come many of your dreams involve you throwing up?"

I ponder that. "I dunno. It just seems to happen in real life. Okay, no  
throwing up. I win the competition and you have to carry me home because I'm so  
stuffed full of chocolate mousse I can't move. All right?"

There's a twinkle in his eyes, like a starry night in summer. "All right." He  
zips up the stuffed knapsack, and I see the glimmer of one of his revolvers in  
it. He taught me how to shoot a couple of days ago. The recoil practically had  
me blasting my own face off.

"… Vincent."

"Yuffie."

"You're not going to go back to Gongaga if I get well, are you?"

He blinks softly at the question. "I… no, Yuffie, I'd be here, I'd want to  
share in it."

"But eventually?"

"Yuffie," my sharpshooter says wryly, "you're counting your chickens so much  
before they're hatched that they're already laying eggs of their own."

"But?" I insist.

"… But… Yes. If you wanted me to. You may not after… after you get well."

"I want you _always_."

"Then I want you always as well, if you wish."

I don't know what we've just said to each other but I have a feeling if I  
sneeze the world might collapse. Gods above, I wish that everything Vincent  
said didn't have to be some sort of _metaphor_. You ask him if he wants tea or  
coffee and he goes on about sun shining on the snow in the mountains. I suppose  
it's better than "…", though, which is what I would have gotten a year or so  
before. Or a lugubrious comment on sin and caffeine.

"Always is a bugger of a time. Are you packing my woolly chocobo?"

"I would never forget Woolly Chocobo."

"Then we're set, aren't we?" I loll back in his arms, suddenly feeling slightly  
woozy and ready to cuddle up against him and go to sleep. "I don't know how I'm  
gonna get to sleep tonight, Vince."

"I do," he mutters, standing up and walking forward to put me on my bed. "I put  
sleeping tablets in your tea."

"You _fucker_," I manage, and I think I was asleep even before it all went black.

* * *

There are so many different types of love. The one I have with Vincent I can't  
even categorize.

I used to get read fairytales as a child and thought that love would be Prince  
Charming. Love would be a hunk. Love would argue with me incessantly and there  
would be passion and sex and all that stuff, with a couple of burning lusts  
thrown in and maybe Angst to mix it all up. Cue Happy Ending, maybe some kids  
who look exactly like me and Prince Hunk. Then…

_Then_ what? Yuffie Kisaragi, Materia Thief Extraordinaire and… Settler Down With  
Two Children. Something inside me would always be screaming to go out into the  
wilderness sans Hunk and go out travelling once more.

Or would it? I don't know what my soul longed for any more. To settle down? To  
go back to my life the way it had been, a shiftless wanderer? To break free of  
my body and join the Green? Gods, would I be allowed to choose? Would I get an  
ending? I knew the Lifestream existed, but would I like it all that much? I  
didn't think I would – not if Vincent wasn't there.

Vincent…

My love for him is uncontrollable, because I can't stop it from welling up  
inside me like nectar in a flower and because I don't care any more if he loves  
me the wrong way back, just so long as he keeps on being mine forever. Mine. In  
me. One, only, all. I'm not sure whether I care about _anything_ or whether there  
is a right way or a wrong way to love somebody; he's so deep within me. It's… I  
can't describe it, not properly, the way it should be described. It's like  
having your shadow suddenly talk… it's like having a tree take root around your  
heart and germinate. It's… it's like Vincent is the Lifestream, for me. I don't  
think heaven could get any better. I'm close to tears and wishing I could say  
it right, because I don't know what I want. Am I _in_ love with Vincent? (Stupid  
shit of a term, as if one can love and be out of love.) Do I want to _make_ love  
with Vincent? Being a complete virgin, I couldn't explain my passion very well,  
or whether it was even the right sort of breathless passion. When you have  
somebody touching your nude body on a daily basis, that sort of immediate lust  
isn't easily translatable. The thought… the thought of being _properly_ naked,  
though (properly?), in his arms, in his equally naked arms, well… Cold shivers.  
Ha. I'm still a teenager. I like that.

It'd mean nothing, though. It would just be another note in our hundred-string  
symphony. Was all love like this? Did he love like this? I could tell what Vincent  
was feeling at almost any given time, but not for me. Goddamn confusing.

I don't want to go without kissing him.

I'll kiss him like a girl kisses a boy she has the hots for. I'll kiss him like  
a woman kisses a man, a man she loves. I'll kiss him like a soldier kisses  
another soldier when they're in the trenches and one of them is about to get  
exploded with a high-level Fire spell. I'll kiss him like two friends kiss each  
other, soft and on the mouth, bodies so attuned it holds different symbolism.  
I'll kiss him like a suppliant might kiss a deity, and like how a ward might  
kiss a guardian.

I'll kiss him how Yuffie Kisaragi wants to kiss Vincent Valentine when nobody  
is looking but him. That, at least, I owe him.

… please, High One, my God. If you have to take me, then don't let me go not  
saying what I want to say.

Why do I acquiesce?

* * *

Trust Vincent to overdose. I only woke up halfway through him in the morning  
carrying me through the forest, nightsky still intact through the tops of the  
trees as I nestled in the warmth of his arms. He could carry me _and_ two heavy  
backpacks and still look serene and practically celestial. Noticing me shift,  
Vincent tucked me more securely against his chest.

"You _suck_," I sulked. "I wanted to be awake when we escaped."

"I know."

"And you drugged me anyway."

"We're escaping now, aren't we?"

"Yes, but this is the best _part_. Did you meet any monsters?"

"I would have had to have tried exceedingly hard if I'd wanted to meet one."

"And you didn't even try?"

It was such a short walk to where the Highwind was waiting it didn't even seem  
like a journey; Cid was waiting for us on the crest of the hill, a little star  
of orange in the darkness where he was smoking. There was something written on  
his face – I don't know what it was, but Vincent saw it too – that made him  
stop as he reached the gangplank. He didn't ask; he just turned around and  
looked.

Cid shifted from foot to foot, eventually pulling out his cigarette and  
spitting on the grass. "… You look a million gil, kid," he addressed me.

"I didn't know the economy had gone down so bad."

The joke died in the air and eventually he stuck the cigarette behind his ear,  
blue eyes training on Vincent. "I _tried_ to tell them, Valentine, damn it."

"…What?" He shifted me in his arms like a baby.

"It was Strife and #ing Tifa, bleeding-hearts, wouldn't take no for an  
answer, jingoed it all up – "

"… You weren't supposed to – "

The cigarette got flung out of his fingers. "I _know_ I wasn't supposed to  
goddamn tell! But there's them on the PHS every day talkin' about it to me and  
Shera slips once and then the cat's so out of the bag I can't do anything about  
it."

I shifted uncomfortably, looking from face to face and stifling another body-  
wracking cough. When had the nights gotten so cold? "Vinnie? Cid? Can anybody  
kindly give me a cup of what-the-hell-is-going-on?"

Cid shook his head in disgust, sticking his hands in his pockets and stomping  
over to the nose of the airship. "You just go on in there," he hollered, voice  
floating up to us, whipped gently by the nightwind. "Remember - #!&ing big  
smiles now."

I hauled myself up with difficulty in Vincent's arms, my thin sticks of bone  
and skin wrapped around his neck to pull myself back and up and stare into the  
sulfur glare of the ship's insides. I was blinded by the light, momentarily, my  
eyes too sensitive, but the moment they adjusted I blinked.

"Oh, my Gawd! What are you guys _doing_ here?"

They were all there. Every single one. Tifa, looking a trifle smug, happiness  
glowing off every pore of her with Cloud sitting behind and sharpening his  
Buster Sword; Barret, coffee-coloured in the light and grinning at me stupidly  
as if I was the world's biggest joke whilst fixing something to do with a smirking  
Cait's back; and Red, on his haunches and dignified, pain pain pain oh my heart  
was _breaking_ in confusion and gratitude. Their eyes all fixed on me as  
if I was something terrible to behold, a wreck, mangled and ripped – then the  
gaze was gone as if it had never been there and the smiles were back.

Stupid morons. Who couldn't adore them?

"Heard you needed a trip up to the mountains," Cloud said, mild and smooth. "We  
came along for the ride."

"Y'know, just for the scenic aspect," Tifa piped up. Bloody twin puppets, those  
two.

Vincent had frozen behind me. I could feel his tension in his chest and I  
didn't know why; I tried to ignore it. Maybe he was just surprised too and was  
trying to express it through large tracks of '…'.

"Red. Guys. Aw..." Despite the reaction from my vampiric brunette, I still felt  
like crying; Tifa had come closer and I smiled at her as best I could manage.  
"Oh, why the hell'd you do this?"

"As if we would miss out on this, Yuffie?" Red's voice was still so gentle.

"It's an adventure, ain't it?" Barret demanded. "AVALANCHE is gonna rock your  
world! Like we'd let yo' skanky little Wutaian ass fall around a mountain when  
you can't do jack shi – "

"No."

Heads craned as their eyes fell on Vincent instead of me. It was probably a  
relief. "Huh?" Cloud said intelligently.

"This is _not_ the time to discuss this." His voice was whip-sharp. What the  
hell? Cid had come back up the ramp, standing a little behind the ex-Turk.  
"… Highwind. I'm going to take Yuffie up the front and put her under. If you'd  
please – "

There was an immediate babble of protest, the only thing stopping Vincent my  
hand reaching out to tug on his ponytail as hard as I could. "Vinnie, don't! I  
want to talk to them during the trip! Awww, c'mon!"

"Valentine, you can't do this _without_ us," Cloud demanded, having finally  
cottoned on to Vincent's earlier statement. "Look, our hands are better than  
yours, okay? It'll be a breeze, we know our way around. It'll – "

Vincent deposited me in Cid's arms as if I was just so much clothing. "No. We  
must confer. Take Yuffie up front, please, she doesn't need to be a part of  
this – "

It was only then that my disquiet turned into fully-fledged horror. "What?!" I  
squawked, my surprise making me have a coughing fit. "Vincent! I want them  
along! Don't make them go away! Vincent!" Cid had already begun carting me  
grimly to the bridge, walking away from the others. I squirmed like a  
cat. "Stop! STOP, damn you! Vincent!" He raised his head to look at me,  
bloodeyes burning. I was in tears like a thirteen-year-old. Cloud was shouting  
at Vincent already, using his Big Bad Leader voice, and I couldn't be heard  
over him. My heart beat in wild desperation, helpless and genuinely frightened.  
I tried to raise my volume to something like my old normal shriek, my throat  
aching in protest. "Stop! Vi – vi - vi – "

The coughing fit throws me. The force that racks my chest is like an earthquake,  
my tectonic plates shifting, my body trying to tear apart. Cid lets out a long  
litany of abuse as he clutches me close and I can smell and taste his cigarette  
smoke; I'm dying, dying, trying to break free. He falls to his knees to hold me  
and I buck back, my lower half lying lifeless but my leg and arms flailing and  
my eyes roll back in my head as I see white things. I turn head to the side and  
I'm noisily, embarrassingly, shamefully fucking sick, only the fluid that comes  
out is too thin and sticky and wet to be anything but a long slick wash of  
blood. I do this every time, don't I? Everything has gone blank black nothing  
and Vincent's hands, they're on my own, I'm light as fairies, Vinnie -

_"I brought you some roses. From the gard'n."_I came to and woke up staring into blue eyes wide as the sky, and blinked in  
utter confusion. Cid shifted a fresh cigarette over impatiently to the other side  
of his mouth; it was unlit.

The roses are the roses of early winter, subtle flushed pink, full of thorns to  
prick small hands. These hands are calloused and tough, so they do not mind the  
thorns, though they watch out for the pale soft hands that seriously take the  
roses from them. They do not have blood to give.

"Thank you." The voice is pure and sweet and thin, like she is. "Flowers from  
my little flower. You'll fetch me a vase, won't you? Dump out the marsh  
goldings from that one, they're wilting and it'll do. Thank you, my lovely."

"S'cold outside." She tries to make conversation. "Mama, do I hafta wear Nami's  
coat? It's all old and grey and grossness."

"Yes, love. I'm so sorry; my fingers couldn't make you a new one this year."  
She looks so apologetic she is forgiven forever. "I'll get your father to get  
you one on one of his trading runs."

"Can it be red?" She loves red.

"It will be red as strawberries and sunsets, little flower, as red as you could  
ever want."

The hands twist in the lap. "Are your lungs better yet?"

The truth. "I don't know."

"They will get better, won't they?"

A lie. "Yes, lovely."

"Because you've got to get better for the Festival. You make the best  
watercakes."

"You compliment me too much, my little flower. The gods will get angry." The  
smile is amazing. "So will Grandma Asako, who is a much better baker."

"Is not," she defends loyally. "You're way better. I better go, mama, I gots  
lessons. With Shake."

"Will you come and see me afterwards?"

"'Kay." The kiss on the cheek, the scampering. "Love you lots, Mama."

"I love you, Yuffie."

* * *

"God, kid," he muttered. "Thought you'd carked it on me there."

"Me t-too." The situation came back to me. "Cid, what the fuck is happening?  
What's Vincent playing at? Summon's gonna be much easier to find with a bunch  
of us, he's crazy if he turns down their offer, I – "

I should have known _then_. I think I should have known all along.

"Shhh, kid, just a misunderstanding," Cid soothed. "You know Valentine, he's  
already got something sealed the # up. Stupid !&ing Cloud, he shouldna - "

"Nobody _tells_ me things." Grief washed over my face and pained my features. "He  
still treats me like I'm twelve."

"'Cause you still act like it," Cid said tartly. "God help me if I have  
daughters like you."

"How's your small one?"

"Kain?" The features softened, just slightly. "He got his head stuck in a pot  
yesterday. We had to completely rub his head'n butter until it popped off."

This, of course, had me laughing so hard my back ached. "Taking after his dad  
already, huh?"

"Oh, just you shut the !# up."

"You kiss Shera with that mouth, you oil-haired old b-bastard? Gawd! You do  
realize your kid's going to be swearing before he's ten?"

Cid looked righteously embarrassed. "Can't swear," he muttered. "Have to fork  
out five gil each time in the Swearing Jar."

Unable to help it, I laughed even _harder_.

"Yuffiegirl? Can I talk to you?"

That made me stop laughing abruptly. "I'm all ears, Highwind. They work."

"No, I mean – " he looked frustrated. "Aw, shit, I…"

"Don't know what you mean?'

"Yeah."

"Happens to me all the time."

He looked at me then, calm and cool, and I saw him as the old pilot who was the  
father of one and the man of many dreams, some of which had even come true.  
He'd complained about me bitterly, talked tough, driven my nose into the sand  
and picked me back right up again whenever I fell. I loved Cid, I suddenly  
realized. I loved him desperately. I just wished I was able to –

Hey, why the fuck not? Nobody should ever have to hold their tongues when  
there's an affirmation needing to be said.

"I love you," I smiled at him, and got the privilege of seeing the cigarette  
dropped from hastily-parted lips.

"That wasn't fair." His voice was a gritty mutter, and the sky was suddenly  
filled with raindrops. "You have to kind of prop a man up for that sort of  
shit."

"You love me back, don't you?" My voice was a soft, tiny, kittenish thing. I  
have realized that all my life all I have ever wanted is to be loved.

"What do you fucking think?" he demanded. I look him over, the rough stubble  
gracing his cheeks, the blonde hair that is rapidly turning as grey as the  
Highwind. "Oh, _help_ me if I have annoyin', rude, stubborn, idiotic daughters  
like you, Kisaragi!"

"I hope they take after me and are as beautiful as they are foulmouthed," I  
whisper. "I hope the males come to you and tell you they want to be dancers in  
rude bars, and that the girls wear overalls and think denim is a fashion  
statement."

"Love y'," he mutters, in bass so low it lost itself, and I have realized that  
all my life I _was_.

Another face entered my vision, one too familiar for thought. Vincent's face  
was as tense as a coiled spring, and in his hand he wielded a full tranquilizer  
syringe. Knowing exactly what this meant, I curled back.

"What – " Cid began.

"Never mind." Gawd, I'd not seen that fury in, I think, years – "Yuffie, your  
arm – "

I just Looked at him.

"Please, Yuffie, you'll understand later," he said tersely. "Later. Please.  
Cid? We're behind schedule."

I don't know why I felt so utterly betrayed. I didn't know what was happening.  
I sort of felt like the core of my world was breaking apart and mushing  
together and my brain, it was making it so hard to think, all I could do was  
look at him. He picked my arm up himself, checking the syringe, and I looked  
away from his face.

"G'night, girl." Cid stuck his cigarette back in his mouth and grumbled,  
stalking off to his bridge.

"G'night," I mumbled back, and the needle slipped into the vein in my left arm  
because the right one had veins that were all tiny and shut and I fell asleep,  
and I wished I had Cloud, because even though he lead me to Sephiroth and knew  
that we were probably all going to die he told us so.

* * *

I've woken up a lot of places.

One time I slept in a tree and I fell out during the night, must've hurt my  
head pretty badly, but when I woke up there were all these stupid mutant death  
frogs sitting on my stomach. That was pretty funny, when I stopped screaming  
and wiped the frog guts off my bare hands. I don't think that story's funny,  
actually. You had to have been there.

I'm a traveller. I think part of the reason I stayed out in the world for so  
many years is that I loved being independent so much. I crawled before I spoke  
properly. It's all a matter of independence. Then again, I learnt how to make  
my father's Lightning materia throw sparks at the cats before I learnt how to  
formulate proper sentences or to not stick the food up my nose, but it's the  
thought that counts, right?

But when I woke up this time it was in a small dark tent and the wind was  
blowing outside, huge and cold and biting. I was safe and I think my body was  
warm, nestled deep in a pile of blankets while I watched Vincent tend a small  
mechanical heating system and muttered out-of-date curses under his breath, but  
my inside was ice cold. He turned around to notice me awake, then turned back  
to his machinery, his fingers pricked and bleeding and his hair still full of  
snow.

I stared for a long while. Shit. "We're… where?" I asked stupidly.

"We arrived."

"But what – "

"You slept through it."

"Did – "

"Gave his well-wishes."

"I – " I began to cough violently again, racking my body, eyes rolling back in  
my head as we both patiently waited for it to be over. It took a while for me  
to recover, and I began to bat very weakly at the blankets, not wanting them so  
heavy or thick or there. "Vincent, I – "

"Medicine," he said curtly. Medicine was different this time, the usual  
assortment of stabbed needles in my arms, but there were no tablets. There was  
hot tea, though, thin and sweet and pungent with peppermint. My breathing  
eased, formerly loud and wet in the icy howling teeth noise of the wind. It  
bubbles in my lungs.

My head tilted back on the pillows packed underneath my head, a warm soft  
drugged glow spreading through my body as the things took effect, and I opened  
my eyes again when I noticed something. My pulse felt odd in my ears; too fast,  
a different rhythm, dancing to wardrums.

"Vincent," I finally said, slow and ready and measured. "How are we going to  
look for Aesculapius in this snowstorm? Y'know, on the map, I located some  
caves, we really should've hidden out in them – "

"Blocked over," he said, flat and slow.

"Bl – what do you _mean_? Vincent, you're not making any sort of fucking sense  
here! You sent away all my friends – your friends too, you, you ungrateful  
_jerk_ – and an Earth materia's going to get you past any sort of blockage, you  
know that, were you afraid of avalanches? Ha, you are, you sent _our_ one  
away!"

There was a moment of silence. Who for?

"Vincent?"

His voice was heavy and soft like the snow outside. I could see his face by  
flickering electric light, and I studied it for a moment. Thick black brows,  
coal-coloured, ebony hair scraped off his face with sweat. Pale face slightly  
chapped from the wind; nose strong, straight, elegant. Cheekbones high and jaw  
diamond-shaped, clear-cut and delicate and beautiful. His eyes are red like  
blood on roses and his pupils are dark as sin. "Yes?"

"What's happening?"

He studies me in turn, and sits up. He is wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the  
sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the thin thermal vest he wears underneath  
peeks out at the area at his neck and at his forearms. The hands, strong and  
scarred and capable, peel back the layers of blankets – there's a crinkly foil  
one I know I used to take for camping up in the mountains that I used to bounce  
on because it made the neatest noises – and takes his fingers and rolls down  
the thin fabric of my sweat-stained cotton top down my shoulders until it's  
rolled to my ribs. Oh, gawd, ew, my breasts have shrunk, haven't they? I don't  
know, I haven't looked at myself like this or thought about it in so _long_. I've  
been sick for… it feels like my lifetime.

I'm fascinated. The little curving poisonlines are up, over the hard lumps of  
my chest, and if I tilt my head back, further. My neck. Over my back and my  
spine, I think. They all cluster over to the right, in the center, there's a  
little writhing wriggly mass of them. My heart murmurs a beat again. They're  
there. The dragon's in my heart.

This prompts another coughing fit, Vincent's hand at my mouth, coming away  
covered in bloodied mucus as I settle back. "How much longer?"

"A few days." His voice strains up from his stomach and looking at his eyes is  
agony. Everything is agony, I realize; it's like there's two selves of me, my  
body and what makes me _me_. The _me_ is seperated from the body by threads, and  
sometimes I remember the threads are there and it cuts all over and stabs from  
the inside.

"Aesculapius?"

"The cave's blocked." He is despondent.

"You're giving up that easy?" I am suddenly furious. This is the man who  
cradled me in his arms and told me that we would win. This is the reason I've  
been holding on so long. Him and his hope. "Fucking bastard, the cave – "

"I blocked it myself." Despondency turns into lead. "I accompanied the  
scientists here who went looking on the Aesculapius expedition. We blocked the  
cave. There was nothing inside, just an altar, no Summon. The real worshipping  
place was beneath the mountain and we never found it. So we blocked it up and  
left it. Shinra's orders."

The planet revolves. "You lied. There wasn't anything ever there, was there?  
The books were right. You lied."

"_Please._" Vincent's features are screwed up, agonized. "Yuffie, don't make  
me – "

"Lie? Lie lie lie? L, I, E. How about a big help of _lies_? If you don't want to,  
you can just lie. Got caught up in your own spiderweb of lying, didn't you?" I  
see with perfect clarity and my own poison spits out my mouth. "You didn't want  
anybody else along on this little trip 'cause then _they_ would've figured out it  
was untruth all along. So Aesculapius was a lie and I'm going to die here. Was  
it all lies, Vinnie? You just kept on telling me stuff so that I wouldn't go to  
sleep and end it all sooner, didn't you?" My heart is rolling around in my  
chest like a dying bird, flapping. I imitate his soft monotone. "'I won't let  
you die, Yuffie.' Lie. 'It'll be all right, Yuffie.' Lie. 'I love you, Yu – '"

He hits me.

It's not a slap, it's a blow, hard against my mouth, to staunch the flow of  
vile filthy pain, and I just lie back and stare. He's gasping, rough-hard like  
an animal, eyes wild.

"How can you say that?" he manages, low and gravelly. "How, when you know your  
life is dearer to me than mine, than… _anything_, and how can you say that when  
this is happening – when you _know_ what's happening? I took you for more than a - "  
He can't talk any more and neither can I listen, shivering though I'm not cold.  
I take big hiccuping breaths in and cough, until my heart palpitates and I know  
I'm beginning to start a fit again and he's scrabbling in the backpacks and  
forces my mouth open, placing a tiny pill under my tongue that makes everything  
burst into odd limbless delirium.

* * *

_Her mother – she's sitting there, doing the laundry, as she sits up on the  
countertop and watches the bubbles. This scene is wrong; she should have been  
six, but instead she's nineteen and swollen and thin. Her mother is wrist-deep  
in suds, and the water is slightly brown with blood._It's hours before I gain lucidity, though it feels like five seconds. I blink  
my eyes at him, feeling slow and dull and heavy, my tongue fuzzy and too big.  
Already I knew when I looked at him there was still anger between us, sharp and  
dry and despairing.

"Mama," she asks, dreamy, noticing that the blood's all from her mother's  
wrists and that it's dripping sticky-sweet, "what's death like?"

"You might as well ask how the stars sing, my precious." Her mother continues  
to patiently wring the clothing.

"Does it hurt?"

"It always hurts."

"I feel like a bird in a bag on the river, Mama."

She turns to look at her, amused. "Then peck a hole and fly, little flower.  
Given the choice to drown or fly? Fly."

* * *

The snow still raged outside, and I couldn't tell whether it was night or day.  
Dying up on a mountain in the snow. Pretty cool, actually. Dying up on a  
mountain in the midst of a raging blizzard is right up there next to 'dying in  
the rain' and 'getting shot in the middle of a parade'. I'd always had a kind  
of hankering for 'battle' or 'blown up in materia accident' or 'smothered in  
gil during freak rainstorm whereupon it rained money', but this would do.

"What'd you give me?"

"… brain drug," he says. "Mahoucine cetrinide. Calenture."

I stare. No wonder there was no pain, only soft tingling in my limbs,  
comfortable heat. "That stuff fucks your brainstem. Y'know, I've heard of more  
deaths due to that than – " He stares at me pointedly, but I ignore. "Anyway,  
where the hell did you get that shit?"

"Bannon. He said you'd need it before you died." His voice is plastic.  
Emotionless.

I am a lost case now. If he got this stuff from Bannon, it means he'd been  
planning for this for months. "You bastard. Always know what's best for me,  
don't you? Took me back to Wutai, decided how I'd be treated, drew this fucking  
illness out for months and months and – " His hands clenched, but I just  
scoffed, voice weak and leaking blood. "Going to hit me again?"

Vincent does worse. Something wet drips down his cheeks and lands on my hands  
and I realize he's crying.

"I have watched," he says raggedly. "For months. I've been watching you die.  
I've been watching you wither into nothing. Every night I've watched you sleep  
and I've watched you bleed. Is that good enough for you? … I had not touched  
anybody in _years_ and I touch you, and no matter what I do, nothing works. Too  
many times I brought you back from dying of fever when you were insane with it  
and felt nothing and it would have been painless and I will be atoning for this  
my entire life. I don't know _what to do_. I. Don't. Know. What. To. _Do_."

"Why? Why'd you take me up here if you knew there wasn't any hope anyway?"

"Because I didn't know what else I _could_ do. When you found out – about  
Aesculapius – there was this light in your eyes that got extinguished months  
ago, Yuffie… I… and when Strife came, he would have ruined _everything_.  
Searching for a miracle that never was. Like I have done." Vincent shook his  
head, curling in on himself, hugging his arms close to his lean body as he  
spits, teeth gritted hard. Oh, my mother, never a demon, just _human_. "And it  
fucking _hurts_, every cell, every part of me."

I'm sobbing too now, with him, every part of me. Like I could blame him or the  
lost look in his eyes when he was just as mixed-up as I was the entire time,  
only he was the one who put on the bravest face and a layer of ice. "Oh, Gods,"  
I weep. "I'm so afraid, Vinny. I'm so afraid. Please don't get mad with me, I'm  
not mad with you, it hurts - "

He melts into my arms and we cling together, a tight ball of tears, his own  
melting into my shoulders as I grasp him to me as tightly as I can. At least  
now I can die with him, alone, my last breathing with this man. He smells like  
hot metal and sweat and he's shaking. The love I have inside me is like a  
supernova, a star inside a cage, alive and burning until I think I'll explode.

"Don't leave me," he murmurs brokenly.

"I don't want to, I _never_ wanted to, gawd, Vincent – " I tilt my head so that I  
can press my forehead to his, our tears slipping hot and heavy down our cheeks,  
mingled. "I don't want to die, Vinnie. I don't but it's happening and I can  
feel it happening and, and, there's not enough _time_ – "

"Never enough – "

"I jus' wanted to – "

"So much to tell you – "

"But I was such a _moron_ – "

He pulls his head slightly away from me. He's so young. My trained killer, my  
Turk, barely a man in body, really, but ancient with tears. The best thing in  
my life. "It was worth it. It was worth it because you were there."

"Yuffie." Vincent shudders, eyes half-closing, and I can practically hear his  
heart beat. The storm has stopped outside. Oh, great. My dying moment and the  
weather _has_ to go all fucking undramatic on me. Lucky thing I'll never make it  
to my wedding day. There probably would have been an earthquake. "You… made me  
feel like I was… more than I am."

"You are more than you are," I whisper, still weeping, affectionate. "And d'you  
know what, I don't know what the hell I'm saying, and that sounded really  
stupid, but you know what I mean, don't you?"

He nods, swallowing.

"Just… c'mere, Vincent. Hold me."

We fit like puzzle pieces, his long legs sprawled across the blankets in the  
tent as we lie together in the slightly-chilled air. His face tucks itself  
underneath mine, on the pillows, his hand at my neck and two fingers on my  
pulse. It dances and skitters and misses, but it's still there, and I know how  
much he needs it. Oh, High God, oh, Mama, oh, Aeris, I'm dying, I'm dying,  
please, just a little bit more, give me all the time in the world for this and  
then I'll go. Fuckers. I don't know how the Lifestream works, but I'm going to  
give somebody hell there when I go. "Vinnie? Listen?"

"… With all my heart."

I shift slightly, clumsily, my body confused. "… There was a girl called  
Yuffie. She was stupid. Her mind was so one-track it shouldn't have even been  
allowed a track. It should've had a small, muddy footpath, and been covered in  
frogs. She was really loud and annoying, though charming and sexy at the same  
time, and she gets to help save the world. Because, obviously, that's what  
Yuffies do. She met a man called Vincent who tried to do everything he could  
not to be seen as a man, because he didn't feel like a man on the inside,  
'cause a long while ago things got done to him and happened that made him feel  
like a demon. Kind of like how Yuffie didn't feel like a warrior, or clever,  
or good enough on the inside. Vincent coped with this by acting like the  
demon he thought he was, kinda, not a man, and Yuffie coped by acting as clever  
and as warrior-ish and better than she was, which wasn't very but made a  
good front."

My voice catches. "They never talked that much. They just knew that they were  
there. And then, one day after the world gets saved and everything is supposed  
to be having a happy ending, Yuffie gets sick and this Vincent protects her  
because it's what Vincents do, I think. Protect Yuffies. And he acts like a  
man, though she acts stupider and stupider every hour of her life 'cause she's  
so afraid because she's gotten really sick and she's going to die, but he helps  
her. And she realizes he's not a demon, or frightening, he's the most _wonderful_  
thing in the world, and she's happy."

Silence again, gentle quiet silence, just a pause for us to catch our thoughts.

"And then they both lived happily ever after," Vincent says softly.

"Happily-ever-after's for bears and princesses."

"So what's our ending?"

"Pretty tragic, the way things are shaping out."

His fingers stroke my neck, warm and sweet and deft. There are tears in his  
voice, months' and months' worth of tears. "Vincent failed Yuffie. And when she  
dies, he'll live the rest of his life waking up each morning and wondering why  
he can't."

"_No_," I say forcefully. "No dice, Kisaragi Vincent. Vincent will wake up every  
morning wondering what he's going to have for breakfast, or possibly whether  
brown is the new black, or whether capes have really gone out of fashion."

He shakes his head.

"That's a shitty end to the story, then, you know." I wind my fingers around  
the black strands of his hair, beautiful, the colour of night and shining  
beetles and leather. "Vincent?"

"Yes?"

"What's love like?"

He lets out a breath, and I'm finding it hard to suck in mine. I know that I  
should feel like my body is hot, and burning-up, and that I should be blacking  
out, but I'm not. My pain centers have been cut off. "It's like… having warmth  
inside you. That nothing can ever take away. That you carry around in your  
heart, and that you would do anything for. Kill for, fight for, die for. It's  
intensely beautiful and it's always full of pain, mingled, because you bleed  
it. But it's like… bullets and flowers and sunshine in winter."

My hands tighten in his hair. "Take me outside," I beg.

He does not argue that I'll freeze, or that it's foolish, or even asks why. He  
just bundles me up and opens all the ties and pulls me out into the clean white  
snow, in his arms.

It's daylight. A morning, I think. Morning just from night, so that if you look  
up high enough there's deep velvet blue and some stars are still there, but the  
sun is clear and the light is thin and beautiful. He walks us over to the edge  
of the cliff and sits down abruptly in the snow, never mind the cold, so that I  
can look over the sheer drop into the cloudy abyss below and see the sky above.  
The world is too beautiful to bear. It always was.

This is more damn like it.

I press myself back, lightly, curled in his arms so that we're cheek to cheek.  
He's more beautiful than the landscape and he's not looking at it at all, eyes  
fixed on me, hungrily devouring every line of my face as if he's committing it  
to memory.

"I love you, Vincent," I say, and he knows what I mean. "Always."

More tears, freezing on his cheeks almost, the wind whipping at his hair. "I  
love you, Yuffie. Always."

He did all along, didn't he? His love screamed itself every day to me, in every  
action, every time he picked me up and stroked my hair back and gave me my  
medicine and gave those small tiny smiles that burnt. "Do you wish you didn't?  
It _hurts_, bad."

"It's worth it, my Yuffie Kisaragi. It has always been worth it. Every moment,  
every day."

"After a speech like _that_, you better be prepared to kiss me. You don't make  
that kind of statement without bothering to pash the person in question,  
Vincent Valentine."

"Kisaragi," he corrects, and I'm proud and aching and he kisses me. Our lips  
brush like butterflies, soft, and I'm clumsy and I don't know what I'm doing  
but suddenly it all comes together. His lips are chilled but his mouth is the  
warmest thing that's ever belonged to me, my heart screaming his name as it  
turns hard and deep and needy as we taste each other, last and loneliest. He  
kisses me until I can't breathe, dying in him, trying to steal his breath from  
his mouth as my eyes close tightly and I know I'm going to black out soon from  
the fever I can't feel. It doesn't matter. He's kissing me like it's the only  
thing that matters. I taste my blood on his tongue.

When he pulls apart from my mouth, it's been a thousand years and a few  
skittery heartbeats. I smile at him, full and bright, and one begins to creep  
along his mouth in return. It's all for show, my silly noble Vincent, because  
there are tears in his eyes and his hands have gripped my wrists so tightly I  
think they cracked.

"Tell my father I love him." My fingers curl around his, limp, weak. "And  
Asako. And the others. Everybody. I think I love everybody. Except Cid." Oh,  
Cid, you'd know what I'm doing. "Tell him he can go to hell, okay?"

He nods, the gesture tight and reigned-in and sharp.

"Now let go."

"What?" Crimson eyes immediately open wide, nervous, no. He doesn't want to let  
go. _Love you love you love you_. "Yuffie – "

I begin wiggling back from his arms, the wind whipping at my face joyously,  
tugging at my longish thready hair. "Leggo, Vince. Please. Last wishes, okay? I  
want you to go to Li Xue and eat the blueberries for me, and get sick, and  
squish mud between your toes, and listen to my dad's boring war stories, and I  
want you to let go of my arms."

"What are you – " He already knows.

It's getting hard to talk, or even concentrate. Dizzy. "Flying, Vincent. I'm a  
ninja. Corpses are just so _tacky_."

His heart is in his eyes. He knows I'm terrified. Unwillingly, he loosens the  
fingers on my wrists, his tears falling like rain. "… goodnight, ninja."

"'Night, vampy," I grin at him, cocky and warm, and I fall back. "Whoo-hoo,  
here we go!"

It is like flying, my limbs spreading wide, catching the stars and the blue sky  
and everything in it as I tumble in a flightless abyss. He lets go and I let go  
and I arch back, I've been taught to fall and I'm going to land on all four  
legs. The last thing I see is chaoswings and the air is screaming.

And Vinnie, it's like bullets -


	8. The Last Day

**Sunshine in Winter**

* * *

_the last day  
_

It was green.

It was the first thing I got impression of; green. Muted and soft and bright,  
glowing, studded like lights in the dark so that the darkness was in the  
deepest shades of forest.

And it was warm. Everything was warm. The heart of me was warm. It was like  
lying in a bath and the water was warm as tea – I _was_ lying in water. It  
caressed my wrists like oil and I floated, weightless, just watching in wonder  
at the green.

So this was what being dead was like. It was kind of a relief, actually, to be  
dead, though I really expected… _more_. It was like meeting somebody famous and  
being disappointed. Hey, Lifestream, I thought you'd be taller in person.

Lazy, I turned over in the water, and realized a number of things:

It was green. It was warm. I was naked.

My eyes finally focused on the roof of the cavern, which was glowing with  
little green lights like stars, gloomy and strangely… I don't know. Beautiful.  
Welcoming. I hate caves; hate them hate them hate them, but this was kind of  
different.

There was a light coming from the far end that hurt my eyes, causing me to  
blink and for water to drip from my lashes. I felt heavy and dreamy and pulsing  
with some inner beat, like a rhythm, that wasn't my heart.

It was awfully curiously like being alive.

Alive…

I couldn't be _alive_. The rhythm inside me began to race. No. That would just  
take the goddamn cake. Not after that fall – not after I felt myself _die_ –  
could I be alive. No. I didn't feel alive.

"You're not," said a voice, "but you're not quite dead, either."

With a half-squeal and a splash I submerged myself beneath the water, treading  
it clumsily with one foot, turning around and bobbing clumsily like an apple in  
the warmth as I turned around to stare. There, on the half-lit rocky shore, all  
green light and steaming rocks, was a man.

And there were snakes.

Dozens of snakes. Hundreds of snakes. _Snakes. I hate snakes._ They were  
strangely silent, their coils slapping against scales without so much as a  
rustle, curled in a halfcircle around… a man. It hurt to look at him, to  
perceive him, almost; he was wearing a long white robe with blood down the  
front and thinning white hair peppered with grey. His face was ageless,  
timeless; lined and young and not quite a face. Just… a skin, a shell, encasing  
something different inside; like an egg and a yolk.

I was suddenly half-terrified. The only thing that stopped me from losing  
bladder control was that I didn't have any in the first place, which makes  
sense if you're me and kind of dead.

"Aesculapius," I said, and looked up.

There was a crack in the roof of the cavern, an opening, where chunks of rock  
had fallen down into the water. Snow and ice had layered over the hole, dulling  
the sunshine, but I could still squint and see through it.

I'd fallen _through_ that.

As I'd _died_.

"That is a name," the figure said dryly, "but one I'm used to."

I stared, trying to figure it all out. "You're not a Summon, are you. You're  
actually God or something. Um, I've been worshipping the Wutai spirits all the  
time, but I'm really open to new ideas so if you're thinking of sending me to  
the deepest fiery eternal pits of hell I'd just like to say that I never liked  
that damn Da-Chao anyway, he can kiss my ass, you look much – "

"I'm sure the gods weep bitter crystalline tears at your piety." Aesculapius  
sighed and sat down on a rock, gripping a staff in one hand as he watched me  
tread water. "You know, I never get any rest, some utter idiot always has to  
come and die across my doorstep every thousand years."

I was insulted. "I was busily carking it, thank you very much. I didn't _mean_ to  
fall into your stupid cave."

"Yes, you did," he said tiredly. "Or, at least, your friend over there did."

I turn and stare. Underneath the crack that is being industriously covered over  
by ice is a raggedy shape I thought was a rock; it's Chaos, it's Vincent,  
hunched over and floating as stiff and silent as a corpse. He's not dead, I can  
hear it in the heartbeat of the walls, not like me, but Vincent –

_He caught me when the light behind my eyes was going bright and wavery and  
fluttering and he spread his wings and howled into the valleys and you never  
could let anything go ever Vinnie could you not even when I said to and your  
claws went through my hands as you bundled my corpse up like a little limp  
bunch of feathers –_I stood, unsteadily, one-legged, on a rock in the underground lake. Steam clung  
to my body and I stared at my hands; they were burst bright and open until I  
could see the flesh and the bones through the raggedy holes. There was blood  
staining my hands and my wrists but it wasn't flowing; just stuck, as if I was  
stuck perpetually in the moment of breaking.

"He saved my life?"

"No, Wutaian. You were entering the point of death when you fell through my  
roof. However, you were not quite past the point of leaving this place. You are  
moving merely on magic, and you cannot remain in that state for long."

I looked at him through the holes in my hands, as it was an experience I would  
surely never have again. "This is _grossness_. This is the grossest thing I have  
ever seen." Tentatively, I reached out with one finger and prodded at some of  
the snapped bones. I felt nothing much; just the numb not-really-painful  
sensation of wiggling a tooth. "I will never eat again. Oh, I would so barf if  
I had a stomach right now. All over the place. It would be a _pukeathon_."

"… Your situation has not quite sunk in yet, has it."

"Look, I can see you through the _holes_. Oh, Gods, I'll never be able to play  
peekaboo ever. Look, my tongue goes right through it. Ynnrraaaaarr. Hey, _water_  
goes right through it."

"Yuff… ie?"

I turned around. The formerly-unconscious Chaos was dwindling down into the  
normal form of my beautiful raggedy Vincent, bleary-eyed and bleeding though I  
could see the cuts close up on him as if they were nothing. They would have  
killed a lesser man. His hair was slicked back to his head and his shirt and  
jacket had come off long ago – we had all learnt that turning into an enormous  
frothing tooth-demon was bad on his clothes – and were decorative rags around  
his chest. His pants had exploded slightly, but he was still apparently decent.  
He was also staring at my nude wet body as if I was some kind of goddess  
reborn.

There is nothing more warm and wonderful and beautiful than the way he looked  
at me then.

"Vincent!" I slipped off the rock and laughed as it bubbled up in my wake, my  
rotten leg stiff and wooden and blissfully nerveless as I flailed in the green.  
He was over to me in a few strong strokes of his arms and he wrapped them  
around me as if he would never let me go, burying his face in my hair.

"Yuffie," he whispered. "I just died a thousand deaths."

"I just died one. Go fig."

The life in his face drained out as he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back  
a little, looking me over, fingers immediately wandering over one twig shoulder  
to my neck. He frowned, then bit one lip; a nervous habit. He was searching for  
a pulse, and he couldn't find one; he saw my hands and widened his eyes in  
remembrance, bringing them up out of the water to stare at the gaping holes  
flash-frozen at the point of gouged bleeding-ness.

"Aren't they cool?" I said flippantly. I brought them up to my face and looked  
at him through the gashes. "Peekaboo."

He gave me the stoniest of stony-Vincent Looks, chilling me to the bone. There  
was real grief in his face, and something close to the despair that had  
perpetually moulded itself to his features when he donned the red cloak and  
guns in AVALANCHE, looking for Jenova.

"I'm sorry," I muttered, suddenly ashamed and guilty and miserable all over  
again. "I'm sorry, Vinnie."

"No." His voice was petrified in pain. "No, no, no, _no_. I won't let this  
happen. I won't fail you."

"You didn't." My own voice half-shook. "Vincent, you were so wonderful to me,  
it was more than I could bear – "

"If you'll excuse me?"

We both looked around at a glowering Aesculapius. Vincent's breath caught; I  
nodded sharply and shushed him with a finger. His hand laced needily with mine  
as I dropped it, both of us clinging like children and turning to watch the  
Summon. "As heartwarming as you two are, I simply cannot take much more of this  
for fear that I will simply go insane and get the urge to blow myself up. Bahamut  
help me, but it happens more than you'd think."

"Why haven't I passed over yet?"

"Because I haven't let you."

My heart caught in my throat. I didn't dare look at Vincent, whose hand had  
tightened over mine, who I knew would at any moment return into one of the  
demon forms and spring over to the summon and threaten _her life or death._

I swallowed. It didn't feel right. "There a good reason?"

Aesculapius gave me a very piercing, calculating look. "There are very few of  
us who can truly bring those who are dead back to life, Wutaian. Reanimation is  
one thing; resurrection is another."

Though I couldn't find my voice, Vincent found his. "So what are you?"

"I am one of those who can truly bring the dead back to life."

Slowly closing my eyes, I ducked my head underneath Vincent's chin and counted  
to a breathless ten. Then I raised it again and stared straight at the Summon,  
his face as pale as paper and his proud features chiselled in stone. "Can you  
bring me back?"

"No."

"Why not?" I could feel the anger build in Vincent, dangerous. "Why?"

"Do you think she would not just die again? Her system is clogged with poison  
and infection; her body is wasted away, she's crippled and useless."

"You're a _healing_ summon and you can't fix that?!"

"… Well, yes, I can," the ancient summon admitted. "I was just toying with you.  
You have no idea how boring it is, being sealed up here like this with nobody  
to talk to but a bunch of snakes. Half of these snakes aren't even real, you  
know, I just created the illusion so that it would _look_ like there were a lot  
of snakes. What kind of snake in their right mind would live in a mountain cave  
surrounded by _snow_, anyway?"

If I was a Summon, I would have wanted to be Aesculapius.

"We are _not_ in the mood for playing games," Vincent said darkly. I knew  
instinctively I was not included in that _we. We_ had chainsaws and frothed at  
the mouth and lived inside Vincent's head.

"You're in the mood for whatever I throw at you, aren't you?" he said  
simply. "I am not benevolent. I _always_ get paid for my services. Besides, give  
me a good reason to heal the girl."

"Because I'd really like you to?" I suggested, ignoring Vincent's nudge with  
his elbow to my ribs.

"No."

"Because I'm going to come over there and kick your stupid butt if you don't?  
Why are you wearing a dress?"

"No."

"I've never met a Summon with a sexual identity problem before. Except maybe  
Ramuh."

"_No_. Although I agree with you on Ramuh."

"Please?"

Aesculapius reclined back on a rock, watching both of us. "It depends," he said  
smoothly, "on what you are willing to pay. I want something precious from  
you."

"Materia? Gil?" I looked up hopefully. "You'll have _all_ of that you want. I  
swear, I've got tons of it, you'll be able to roll around on a big pile of it  
all day – "

"Something _precious_." His eyes pierced into mine. "You neither have that with  
you nor really care for it. I have taken many things before. Voices; graces;  
first-born-babies; jewels, trinkets. I've taken beauty. I've taken soul. My  
price is high, Yuffie Kisaragi."

"How do you know my – never mind."

Aesculapius went over to the water and knelt down in it, his hands resting down  
on the surface, looking at the unhappy duo of the dark-haired ex-Turk and me.  
What a picture both of us must have made; me a corpse, my ribs sticking out of  
my skin and my colour blue-grey-white and my lips probably grey and huge holes  
through my hands, clinging to bloodstained Vincent, who was gnawing on his lip  
until it bled and whose golden hand was warmed by the water, clutching one of  
my wrists as he attempted to enfold me in a protective embrace. I kept on  
feeling his fingers hesitantly move up my arm and try to feel for veins,  
pulsebeats, anything. Oh, Vinnie, Vinnie, I couldn't let go now, because his  
heart wasn't broken but it was going to be pulverized and he'd follow me  
immediately into the dark. Out of love, this time, and loyalty, not just  
guilt.

I got the feeling, deep in the heart of the water, that he had atoned.

"You know," Aesculapius said softly, "maybe it would better if I just let you  
die. Life is, for humans, meaningless and sadistic and painful. You'll walk out  
of here and get struck down by something else. You're going to become one with  
the Planet eventually. Death is relief and peace and warm. You never hurt.  
You're never harmed. Life is like a knife drawn across your tongue. You chose  
death once. What was the meaning of your life before, Yuffie Kisaragi?"

"I chose death once and I regretted it like nothing else I've ever regretted.  
Ever."

He turned to Vincent. "You stink of immortality, Chaos. Can you honestly say  
that life is sweet? That life is better than letting go, that the world is not  
full of misery and hatred and panic?"

"Yes," Vincent said softly, "because although what you say is true, the world  
is also beautiful."

"You wanted to die once and let it all end."

"Hypocrite."

"If you let her die, she'll never hurt again. She'll be taken care of. If you  
let her go, you'll never have to worry about her ever, or fear for her pain.  
She'll be able to have what you cannot."

His good hand tightened around my wrist. "The world is dark and cruel, Summon.  
I readily agree to that."

"But?"

"… She gave me meaning." His jaw tightened. "And she needs to be alive so she  
can find her own in turn."

Like I said, Vincent Valentine's a fascinating person. He can stay with you for  
months on end and have you puke on him and die on him and cry and yell and  
scream at him but he still can claim that you gave him grace like that.

"So what are you willing to pay, Kisaragi? What is more precious to you than  
anything else?"

I looked at Vincent and I saw the thought form in his head even as he said  
it.

"Me." Vincent looked him straight in the eye without hesitation. "Take me. Use  
my life as payment for hers."

"_No!_" I immediately rounded on him. "Vincent, that's stupid! I _love_ you! You're  
_my_ meaning! You're my _everything_! I don't want to live without you and I can't  
and I won't and – "

"Very noble," Aesculapius noted; then, making me practically melt in relief,  
"but impossible. You are not hers to give. You did not come from her flesh and  
she does not own you."

Ha, shows how much _he_ knew. Mutual eternal bondage. I began to understand why  
Vincent had jumped after me.

My mind raced. What else did I have precious on me? Nothing. Nothing _had_ been  
precious to me in the last year or so but Vincent, and life, and I couldn't pay  
with my own life because that was just moronic. I would have offered my first-  
born child, but that rang hollow and empty; I didn't really care at that moment  
about children. My body. I wasn't beautiful in any way, shape or form so I  
couldn't give that; I'd never treasured anything except my skills as a ninja –

_" - I would never do this to you if I did not feel the need, but I feel that  
for the sake of your life we need to ampu - "___

"My leg," I said slowly. "You want my leg."

"Give it to me."

"You wanna come get it or something?" I paused. "Y'know, what are you going to  
use it for? It'd make a gnarly sockpuppet."

"Remove it." His eyes glinted. "Remove it and give it to me."

Vincent looked down at his claw, and back at me.

"You sick fuck," I muttered. "I bet the other Summons laugh at you behind your  
back and say that you're a creep. I bet you get drunk at parties and hit on  
Shiva. No wonder they lock you down here in this cave. I bet it's because you  
_smell_."

"Her leg," Vincent said slowly, "for restoration."

"Granted."

"Can she feel pain?"

"Now she can."

All my pain centers opened up in one glorious symphony of agony and I clung to  
Vincent, my eyes rolling back in my head, gurgling as fire poured through my  
veins and blood simmered in them that wasn't moving. My heart could not pump;  
my body was stuck in stasis, save for the pain, so I was safely curled into the  
state of death.

Oh, Gods, I was meant to die, I was meant to die, I wanted to die, it hurt it  
hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt. I wanted to pass out but I couldn't; all I could  
do was feel, my skin sensitive and hurting as Vincent lifted me up in the arms,  
wading through to shore past Aesculapius, murmuring cooing little noises of  
comfort and meaningless phrases as, tender as a mother with a newborn, he laid  
me down on the rock.

"Almost all over, Yuffie, it's going to be okay, just keep still – keep still…  
it's going to be over. All over." Mutters. "I can't cut cleanly with this. Damn  
it. Yuffie – I'm going to take it off above the knee, otherwise I'm going to  
split you right open. Can you nod? You agree? Yes?"

His fingers curled around mine, and it hurt, and just before it began I heard  
him whisper; "Damn it, Lucrecia, please _help me_."

The pain, eventually, was the relief. Since I was hurting all over from the  
hands that wouldn't bleed and the body that wouldn't die and the organs that  
wanted to shut down but were frozen in stasis, it all just melded into  
something I could half-cope with as Vincent crouched down before me and ripped  
the razor-sharp claw into the bone and I screamed and screamed and screamed.

It felt, basically, like someone was ripping my leg off with imperfect tools.

Eventually it was all over. The wound didn't bleed and blood didn't spurt. Poor  
Vinnie had done the best job he could but his face was still shaded with guilt  
as he gave the ugly limb to the Summon, passing it up, unwilling to go much  
further from me.

Smiling, Aesculapius threw the leg into the water. It turned bright red like  
blood and the limb disappeared. "Done and done. Take her into the waters,  
Valentine."

Vincent hauled me up in his arms, me twitching, and I looked at his face for  
what seemed like eternity. Me and him, we'd come a _long_ way together. He had  
given me his strength and his weakness and his tears, something I hadn't known  
two years ago that he physically _had_. My breath quickened, though I didn't have  
it, just out of habit to deal with the screech of my nervous system. He looked  
at me, crimson eyes fathomless, and I huddled closer to his chest as he began  
walking into the water.

"… This had better work," he informed Aesculapius darkly.

"Have faith, Chaos."

When the waters finally touched me, when Vincent took his feet from the shallow  
floor beneath and let me go and I floated and eyes closed as everything started  
to go bright. It was my mother in the morning, touching my forehead and then my  
shoulder to wake me up and lift me into her arms and whirl me around as I  
sleepily wailed my discontent. It was my father, slowly wrapping the first  
bindings around my hands as I took my first steps down the path to becoming a  
ninja. It was Aeris, hand brought up to her mouth as it to try and muffle her  
giggles as she grinned at me, warm and bright. It was everything good I had  
ever felt and pressure began to build up inside my chest until I burst out in a  
spluttery laugh –

The first beat of my heart rang loud as a bell, and the waters were warm like  
sunshine and birthwater and I was being reborn while Vincent watched in silent  
wonder.

And the last thing I heard was a mutter; "I do _not_ smell."

I know I'll die someday. That day just won't be today.

* * *

When I woke up, it was very cold.

"Come on, Yuffie," somebody was saying gently, a voice familiar like hot tea on  
a cold night. "Wake up."

"Lemme sleep s'more, Vinnie," I complained tiredly. "S'unfair."

There was – something - in his voice. "Wake up."

I woke up, and the remembrance shivered down my spine.

There was a chill in the air and my body ached slightly, like it does when you  
awaken, a tingle running through my body that kept it oddly warm. I blinked  
slowly, the bright white hurting my eyes.

There wasn't any more pain.

I looked up into the face of Vincent, and looked around at the snow. We were  
out in the middle of a random snowfield, and he was clutching my body as close  
as he could – I wasn't naked any more; I was dressed in the ratty sweatstained  
cotton shirt and loose pants of before, my flight down the mountain. One of the  
legs of the pants flapped loose and empty, and I suddenly felt as clumsy and  
unshielded as a baby.

"My leg," I said, and I don't know why but tears stung at my eyes.

"Look." Although the wind whipped at us, he turned around to try to lessen the  
bite of it on me. He was barely-dressed himself, exposed to the snow and the  
ice and the freezing cold; however, he felt as oddly warm as I did.

Aesculapius' gift. We would not die out here. Rolling the flapping leg of my  
trousers up, we both examined the stump of my thigh; it was smooth and clean as  
if I'd suffered the wound ten years ago. "It will be fine."

"But…" I looked down at my arms and widened my eyes. Before, they had looked  
like twigs; now they were the old confident punch-punch-parry shape, leanly  
muscled and strong. The other arm matched it; frantically, I checked the rest  
of my body. There were no more poison marks. My stomach was no longer the  
swollen-starvation flap it had been; it was flat and taut, and the good leg –  
the only leg – was as sharply defined as before the accident. And my chest…

"Look!" I cried out. "Hallelujah! I've got _boobs!_"

Vincent declined looking, just trying to keep hold of me as I wriggled and  
stretched and gurgled like a stream in his arms out of joyousness. He just  
watched my face, bloodied eyes intent on it as my entire body momentarily burst  
out in an expression of happiness. I stopped, pensive and worried again, as I  
stared down at the clumsy stump.

"Vincent," I said. "Vinnie, I'm never going to walk again."

"Yes, you will," he said, and the simplicity and faith of his statement made me  
believe. "Just as I learnt to hold a gun again, and fire it."

"You were left-handed," I realized.

He shifted me to one hip, raising the golden claw so that we could both watch  
the sunbeams sparkle off the surface. "It's not so bad," he murmured. "And I  
learnt, though it was so very hard. I used to think it was fitting. A claw for  
a monster."

"I think it's _hot_," I said stubbornly. "Alluring. Besides, gold goes with  
anything."

He laughed at that, sudden and amused.

"Think they come in green?" I batted my eyelashes, reckless, his face turning  
towards mine with a smile still melting his mouth. I had to swallow, throat  
suddenly dry, him too heart-stoppingly gorgeous to almost look upon. Vincent  
Kisaragi; mine. I think he was mine. "Gold just _won't_ go with my outfits."

"We'll get you one in green."

"Even if we have to spraypaint it?"

"Even if we have to spraypaint it."

I clung to him, precarious, my cheek fitting in the familiar space between his  
neck and shoulder as I breathed in his scent. Far away, in the distance and  
getting closer, was the noise of an airship.

"…here comes Strife and Highwind," Vincent said, half-resigned. "They've been  
looking for us all night."

"Hey!" I let go from around his neck and waved my arms up, so that he had to  
pull me straight so that I didn't topple off into the snow. "Over here, you  
bastards!"

My eyesight had improved, too. Everything was in sharp relief; the mountains,  
the true blue dream of sky, the Highwind slowly chugging along towards us and  
Vincent's hair whipped by the wind. When I turned back to him, he was looking  
at me, devouring my face again with his gaze like he had done before I had  
flung myself off the mountain. I knew, instinctively, that I would get much  
grief and scolding for that later.

Or maybe I wouldn't. "What're you lookin' at?" I demanded, half-shy.

"You."

"I'm that ugly?"

"Yuffie," and his voice was deep, a note of huskiness in it, the kind that sent  
my toes curling and my stomach up in knots as my heart fluttered – and this  
time, not in medically-related death-throes; "you are the most beautiful thing  
I have ever seen in my life."

They found us kissing, breathing life into each other's mouths, over and over  
and over again as if we would never stop.

* * *

_epilogue_

So.

I won't say, "And then we lived happily ever after!" because we didn't. Not  
immediately. Anyway, who on earth could live happily with _me_? I bitch about  
everything from the weather to shoes to the updates on guns, and after a while  
even unrufflable Vincent will have the urge to verbally smack me upside the  
head.

But I skip ahead too far.

I could say that the biggest party ever was immediately flung upon the  
Highwind, which was true, with long talks with Reeve-talking-through-Cait about  
prosthetics and immediately declaring I wanted a Gun Leg like Barret's Gun Arm,  
which wouldn't work because as cool as spraying bullets into somebody every  
time I kicked them might _sound_, I would probably end up killing myself. A pity,  
because it would have been a great trick at long boring dinners to shoot  
people's feet who I didn't like. Cid and I attempted a manly unemotional hug  
until we gave up and clung to each other, him hoisting me easily up into his  
embrace as he muttered, voice thick, "I thought I was never gonna !#ing see  
you again."

And nobody raised eyebrows that Vincent wouldn't put me down and carried me  
around like a baby rather than let me sit. We held hands and didn't realize  
that we frequently got lost looking in each other's eyes until Cloud and Tifa  
started letting out piercing wolf-whistles. I had my first moment of fright  
when I felt nauseous and it all came back to me, the terror and the depression,  
but he held my hand as I looked green and clutched the railing and, you know,  
half-retching isn't _supposed_ to be romantic.

Everything looked wonderful and fresh and different, because I hadn't seen it  
for months and months. It had felt like a decade, my being sick, and I realized  
that even before when I was wandering the world I hadn't really taken the time  
to look at anybody and I exclaimed over the littlest things – "Tifa, your hair's  
grown so _long!_" and "Red, you look all sexy – are feathers coming back in?"  
and "Cloud, your manboobs! They're huge!" although I just said that so that  
he would fling me down to the floor of the airship and tickle me.

They were afraid to touch me, at first, feeling that I'd break, knowing that  
when I stood – oh Gods how wonderful it was, to stand! – I wouldn't be able to  
keep my balance for long before I fell down into a frustrated little heap of  
limbs. However, that didn't stop me leaping from my chair to fling myself  
bodily to the ground, startling Vincent something awful, crabwalking over to do  
things like tug at people's legs and look up Tifa's skirt. They had realized  
that I was old unbreakable Yuffie when I had pulled Red's tail on the sly, made  
him yowl, and wrestle with me like I used to do until Vinnie pulled me off and  
smacked my nose.

He was treated different, too. Although he still devolved into helpless bouts  
of "…", they approached him more, finding it easier to ask questions of him.  
Probably because they realized that after a year or so of being my nurse  
nothing could really annoy him any more, in hindsight.

And I whispered fervent frequent prayers of thanksgiving to Aesculapius, mostly  
along the lines of, "Thank you _so_ goddamn much, you dress-wearing no-pants  
transvestite."

I think he heard.

When we got home, my ears burst from the two-way weeping relief and heartless  
shouting match that immediately was given by my father and Asako. Godo couldn't  
stop touching me, as if maybe I wasn't really real and he would wake up at any  
second, and I do believe that it is the only time in his entire life that he would  
ever be caught dead flinging himself at my feet – foot – to rest his cheek on one  
knee and weep "My daughter," to me. I was higher than a cloudhead on ten shots  
of calenture, floating on a sea of love.

And I don't think anyone was more surprised - when, triumphant, taken in to  
measure up for my prosthetics - than Dr. Malachi Bannon, who was given my  
middle finger by way of hello and told that he could fuck himself.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Kisaragi," he said dryly, as Vincent rolled his eyes in despair  
at me. "My mother always said that would make me go blind."

They weren't green, by the way – the prosthetics; they were shining steel,  
completely inhuman, smooth shiny fitted-in poles and attached to my leg in a  
way that I could pull the entire contraption off, leaving the stump and a  
permanent steel fixture that the thing plugged into. Reeve helped build them  
himself, his long perfect engineer's fingers fixing up the wiring as I flexed  
my new toes.

"Do you want me to fix them up? Fake flesh?" he asked.

"Nah," I said, extremely satisfied. "I like it naked."

My first cartwheel was in the woods outside Junon, and my tears fell into the  
soil like rain. Yuffie Kisaragi, Wutaian ninja, had officially Gotten Her  
Groove Back.

* * *

I'm kind of like a vase, a broken one. I got shattered when I fell so I had to  
be picked up and all the pieces glued back on, only some jerk lost a bit on the  
way so I had to be patched up. Now I'm a definitely odd-looking vase, all  
cracked and one piece that didn't belong to the original model, but I'm more  
interesting this way.

Besides, the man who superglued me back together says so, and I love him.

That wasn't all we did in Junon, either. The moment I walked out the door, my  
first outside trip with my prosthetics and half-afraid of walking, I forgot to  
be afraid and dragged Vincent to the tattoo parlour. I got out a notepad and a  
pencil and got creative, then showed it to the artist.

He scratched his head slowly, one eyebrow raised. He had really neat sideburns.  
I wanted sideburns momentarily, but then I remembered I couldn't grow them,  
being a woman. "Are you sure, p'tit? This is a big job. Going to hurt like a  
bitch."

I smiled mirthlessly, long and masochistic. "Do me."

And, of course, it hurt like a bitch when it was going over the bone and  
Vincent held my hand – with the real one, which I thought was a nice gesture,  
because I think I dislocated most of his fingers – as it got done. The ink was  
blueblack like a midnight bruise, which I thought was fitting; when it was  
done, there were marks spiralled up from my thigh to my hip to my stomach,  
small and quiet and lethal. The poison curves, perfectly rendered from memory.

"Battlescars," I told Vincent, when he asked why.

And when I had healed up and the tattoo had stopped itching I dressed him up  
sexy – blood-red shirt, black pants, that long beautiful hair combed painstakingly  
by me and tied at the nape of his neck – and he was such a bloody knock-out I'm  
surprised no woman came up and asked him right out to contribute to her next  
generation with his genetic material. I wore a short skirt so that everybody  
could see every detail of my artificial leg and possibly my underwear if I bent  
too low, and enjoyed every damn minute.

No, I didn't barf. I was falling unsurprisingly in love with the idea of eating  
food and having it stay down.

That took up the long winter, which we spent teaching me to move properly again  
with grace until I beat my father hands-down-pat once more with the Conformer  
gleaming deadly in my hand. Vincent kicked my ass, but I let him. Honest.

We burnt all the old bedding, and got rid of the medicine, and stripped out my  
little house until it held no sign nor scent of sickness. When I hadn't been  
looking, Vincent had disabled my traps and made the basement inhabitable, which  
I pouted about. Living in a house where I could not trap unsuspecting victims  
any time I liked was going to be hard going in my mind.

In the spring, he took me hiking out to the waterflow that flowed down from Li  
Xue. I picked jonquils on the way and tucked them behind my ears and into the  
straps of my top and down the back of his shirt when he wasn't looking, and we  
sat up the top next to the rocks and watched the water fall. We ate melting  
fudge ripple from our fingers and from each other's fingers and got sticky,  
especially me, half my face getting covered and the next half hour spent  
sucking it from my lips.

After that, we did _not_ immediately swim in the river, because in fact the  
icecream had prompted something quite different. I licked the sweet chocolate  
stickiness from my lips and then, just to be thorough, I started licking it from  
his, whereupon things got wonderfully out of hand. We ended up on the grass  
bank near the top of the waterfall with him slowly pulling flowers from my  
clothing, and then with almost-hesitancy clothing from my body, proceeding  
to very gently –

I won't go into that. But I will always, always remember the scent of crushed  
jonquils.

We skinny-dipped afterwards in the water and I examined the unripe gooseberries  
with dreamy intensity as we dried out on the shore. I tried to catch the fishes  
with my hands, but never made it.

Go fig.

In the end, when my father retired in late summer when the bees hung heavy over  
blossoms, Vinnie _was_ made Lord Vincent Kisaragi of Wutai. However, in the same  
ceremony, I was also made Lady Yuffie Kisaragi of Wutai, with a marriage to  
keep things convenient.

"Were you holding out to marry somebody_ else_?" I demanded my ex-Turk when he  
opened his mouth to protest. Although he poutily declared that he wasn't – yes!  
He pouted! – he still held a very disgruntled expression on his face until we were  
declared husband and wife, as if I'd hit him on the head with the Conformer and  
dragged him back to my cave.

We were married in the bright sunshine, and I was twenty years old. The entire  
village – town; oh, how big my Wutai had gotten, I was so proud I could burst –  
came to watch as the seat of power passed to Vincent and I, and as we held  
hands and promised to love and cherish and protect. Asako complained about the  
too-short length of time she'd had to organize my wedding dress. I wore green  
and blue and violet, and he looked almost uncomfortable to be in red and orange  
and saffron; for once, he was clad in something that he couldn't immediately  
attend a funeral in, understandably a new experience.

Why am I talking about the clothes? I spent the entire ceremony unaware of  
anything but his face, the warmth of his fingers bound to mine as Godo  
instructed him to lean down and kiss me.

Cloud and Tifa cheered the loudest, both coming to kiss our cheeks as was  
ritual with sneaky little smiles on their faces, as if they had somehow  
organized the entire affair. When Cid came up with Shera and bouncy little  
Kain, who never walked if he could hop and never hopped if he could leap  
forward dangerously and fall down on his blonde head, he was sniffling.

"He always cries at weddings," Shera explained tenderly even as he thickly  
snapped, "I got an _eye_ disease that does it!"

Love. I felt like I was brimming full of it, about to spill over. It had all  
been worth it, every moment of it, and I would never again be starved of that  
bullet-blown feeling like I had wandering desperately around the planet trying  
to find meaning in my materia-driven life.

Later, the same night, our wedding night, we went over to the rocks of Li Xue  
and watched the sun set; red and gold and purple and orange.

"I can't believe I got so much materia for frigging wedding presents," I  
half-complained, happily resting with my cheek on his shoulder. "That's very  
stereotypical and biased."

"… I do not recall seeing you look unhappy when Cloud presented you with his  
mastered Knights of the Round."

"I'm keeping _that_ baby in bed with me at night," I said enthusiastically.

"Yuffie?"

"Yeah… love?" The words were new on my lips.

"I have… been thinking."

"Try not to. It gives you wrinkles."

His arm tightened around my waist. "Once, you told me a story. It never had an  
ending."

"Happily-ever-after."

"As you said, that's for bears – and princesses."

"Well, it is."

"I think it should get an ending."

"All right." I wiggled my toes. "So how do we end, then?"

"Happily-ever-after," – and he pulled me into his arms, familiar and warm,  
cradling me and protecting me long after I outwardly needed it – "my Wutaian  
princess."

You can't help loving somebody who says completely soppy stuff like that.

"I love you, Vincent Valentine," I said.

I have always been a traveller. It's just what I do. It just took me a long  
while to learn that the travelling of the body's nothing without the travelling  
of the soul to go with it.

And we lived happily ever after. Despite him not being a bear.

**_the end_**

__

**A/N:** It is done!

I have had a great deal of fun writing this story. I think it showed. Which  
isn't to say that there weren't points where I _wasn't_ having fun, because I  
still didn't know the ending even when I was writing it. I started writing  
Sunshine In Winter because my mother had deep-vein-thrombosis, a blood clot,  
in – you guessed it – her leg. There was a very good chance of her dying, and  
as some subconscious outpouring of frustration, this story began. My mother  
lived so I was free to shout at her and argue and wish her dead later on, as  
all teenagers do; I am very thankful. Love you, mum.

But yes. For the past year or so there have been shouted conversations between  
me and my esteemed beta-reader, who happens to be my brother. Brothers are the  
best beta-readers ever. He used to sit at his computer and shout encouragement  
like, "You stupid piece of shit, Yuffie's not going to say _that_" and "Vincent's  
cardboard. Give him a personality before it becomes the story of Yuffie The  
Personality Vampire. Oh, and you suck, and you can't spell, and you were  
adopted."

Discussion on the ending ran as follows:

**Me:** "So how should I end SiW?"  
**Him:** thoughtfully "Well, Yuffie can get kidnapped by the Running Man, and  
Reno can discover that the main female villain is actually his estranged wife."  
**Me:** "You're completely _useless_. And mommy never loved you."

Now, for the promised thank-yous, because this fanfic was powered on Mountain  
Dew and worshipping my Final Fantasy VII Yuffie and Vincent dolls in hopes  
elves would write the next chapter and – most importantly - my reviewers. I  
realize that this set of author's notes is quickly becoming longer than some of  
my fanfics, but bear me out; this needs to be said.

**For And Thank You:**

I'd leave a message after everyone's name, but I don't think I could say  
anything meaningful enough to you. Just... thank you, thank you _everyone_.  
There are some of you who have been with me and this 'fic for ages; I know your  
names and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Everybody, have a big big  
cookie.

For Yuffie Valentine, who first archived it and liked it, and who holds my  
deepest admiration.

For Yuffie fans everywhere, and for Vincent fans, because you know you just are  
so awesome.

Piett/Andrew, thank you for being a great brother and a great beta, and for  
leaving my first piece of constructive criticism (through a fake name.  
_Tim?!_) ...Though you're still a jerkwad. And I lied about you being a good  
brother, you suck. Don't believe him, the Chocolate Mousse story is a lie. …  
okay, it isn't, but that's a secret between you and me, okay guys?

And thank you freedom, love, caffeine, and everybody's equivalent of Woolly  
Chocobo everywhere!

**- Guardian**


End file.
